Different Way to Dry Hop

[Barley Water]

I attended an extremely large homebrew contest this past weekend (the Bluebonnet Brew Off here in the great state of Texas) and the topic of beer came up a couple of times between pints. Everyone knows that it is a bit pain in the butt to dry hop because you end up with vegetal matter in your kegs which can clog up the poppet valves. Somebody was telling me that some brewers are tossing the hops into French Coffee presses, extracting the goodies then dumping it into the fermented beer before kegging. Has anybody tried this and if so, what procedures did you follow? I tend to use hop pellets as they are much more available and usually easlier to use than whole hops but the damn things certainly are a pain when dry hopping....any suggestions?

[seymour]

It's not the exact same thing, but a similar concept:

Several times, I've "dry-hopped" using whole leaf stuffed into a homemade hop back, except at room temperature, connected to a racking tube from my secondary fermentor, then out to the bottling bucket. The container has a copper scrubby pad inside, connected to the out-flowing tap, which filters just fine. I got huge fresh hop aroma without any of the vegetal matter, haze, and dissolved broccoli stew essence. They're cheap and fun to build, and certainly another alternative to floating hops in the fermentor or kegs.

I don't have a picture of mine, but here's a similar one I found online:


I'm sure you've seen "The Randalizer" online, built using a whole-house water filter housing, right? At brewpubs and beer fests, I've seen them used the same way I describe, except inserted between a pressurized keg and a chilled serving tap...

[Barley Water]

Yeah, I have a home made Randall like you show in your photograph. I've only messed with it a couple of times, I couldn't keep it from clogging up. I need to make an American IPA and screw around with that thing again, it makes for a cool party conversation piece. I know some folks are doing what I'll call a poor man's Randall and using the French coffee presses instead. You just throw the hops in, fill it with beer then press down the screen and pour the beer. I've never tried it myself but I bet the beer foams up something awful. What I do right now to dry hop is just throw the pellets into the secondary, let 'um sit for 7 days, crash cool the whole thing then siphon the beer off the hops. I suppose it works ok but you still get some sludge coming across for the first couple of pints. What might work is to use a pump and a qizmo like you have pictured then pump the beer over the hops for three or four days, it would really clean up the beer as well assuming of course the whole thing didn't just plug up. Then you could say that your beer was "hop filtered" as versus say "beechwood aged" and it wouldn't be just a cheap marketing gimmic.

[jonnyt]

I've actually considered using both options and am going to try the Coffee press idea along with cutting the whole leaf hops up first with a liquidiser.

Using BIAB with no chill hop tea has worked really well for late editions , so I've thought extending to adding aroma when kegging/bottling is the next natural step as dry hopping is messy and hard to make work.

[raiderman]

I've been quiet happy with whole hopping cornies with up to 50g in a mash bag weighed down with a couple of ramikins - and no it still won't sink

[Barley Water]

I have often wondered about dry hopping in the serving keg. I never let the hops sit around on the beer more than 10 days because you start to pick up vegetal tastes doing that. On the other hand, I know some commercial brewers throw a few hop cones into the cask before being delivered to the pubs in your neck of the woods. Do they get away with that because the stuff turns over really quickly or are they just using a little so as to not run into that problem?

Anyhow, I designed the plumbing on my Randall so that I could easily splice it into my beer lines on my kegorator at home. I really need to make a nice American IPA then purchase some Cascade leaf hops, load the thing up and put it on line, that would be a fun change. I have also heard of people putting spice, fruit and all kinds of crap into the Randall then running the beer through it (although that strikes me as being a bit over the top).

[raiderman]

I have often wondered about dry hopping in the serving keg. I never let the hops sit around on the beer more than 10 days because you start to pick up vegetal tastes doing that. On the other hand, I know some commercial brewers throw a few hop cones into the cask before being delivered to the pubs in your neck of the woods. Do they get away with that because the stuff turns over really quickly or are they just using a little so as to not run into that problem?

).

I'd read about the vegetal taste from over long dry hopping, but I've never had an issue with it. Initially the fear always put me off doing it. Then I brewed a lager with Motueka which had a sort of orangy taste which I wasn't keen on, so in desperation I dry hopped with about 50g of cascade and citra and that improved it no end. that keg hung around for months and I got no off flavours and no issues with sterility, so now I don't worry about how long they are in there for

[seymour]

That's good news. I think the vegetal issue comes from higher quantities of hops, and higher alcohol percentages, acting like turpentine which dissolves the organic matter into solution. I once used 4 oz/113 g of dry hops in a 3 US gal/11.3 L batch of 8% barleywine, and the results, as I've said before, were like a grassy, murky, broccoli stew. Not good at all.

Obviously, that's not a typical scenario. What raiderman said makes sense to me: a reduced quantity of dry-hops in a larger batch of session beer can be very pleasant, without the problems I described.

[raiderman]

a reduced quantity of dry-hops in a larger batch of session beer can be very pleasant, without the problems I described.

That makes sense. I've done two recenntly, both in fairly light beers, the first about 4.5% all pale malts but about 200g of aromatic malt, all late hopped but big time, so no great bitterness but plenty of flavour and 50g of delta and citra in the cornie. in terms of flavour my eldest who was back from sanfrancisco pronounced it an amrican ipa - and whilst the aromatic gave it a malty undertone and the delta gives a cascade like earthiness any advrese affects of the late hopping would have come through, and I'm please to say they didn't. A cracking pint.

[seymour]

San Fran, eh? Surely he brought some Oakland Raiders swag home for his old man, right?

[raiderman]

I alternate my coffees between my Leeds Rhinos lattee mug and the Raiders mug he got me. Prize possession is my autographed Plunket shirt. The only safe shirt for a Raiders fan. I mean who remembers J'Marcus Russel now?
Being a suberb of Oakland SFran is a nice place to be based. I do admit to planning trips out there to coincide with Raiders games. Alas tho my boy being a tekki knows nothing of the finer points of Football and has actually startered watching the 49rs. This is very sad but fluking it to a Superbowl hasn't convinced him that he should be listening to me!

[orlando]

Getting back to dry hopping cornies, would you contemplate pellets in a fine mesh hop bag or avoid altogether and just go for whole leaf? If whole leaf every time, is having them loose asking for a blocked dip tube so again bagging as the solution? I was also thinking about suspending the bag in some way so it is kept off the bottom and away from the dip tube, what do you think?

[raiderman]

Getting back to dry hopping cornies, would you contemplate pellets in a fine mesh hop bag or avoid altogether and just go for whole leaf? If whole leaf every time, is having them loose asking for a blocked dip tube so again bagging as the solution? I was also thinking about suspending the bag in some way so it is kept off the bottom and away from the dip tube, what do you think?

I suspect there are pro's and cons either way. In theory pellets ought to be easiest, but my worry is debris as they break up, so I've never riked them. It would be intersting to see if a hop bag is enough to contain them. I might try that in a part used cornie as an experimennt.
Whole hops have to be conttained due to risk of blockage. This may restrict extraction, but I give the keg a swirl every day for the first week. It certainly limits quantiy Getting a 50g bag into a cornie is fine, but getting it out after when its swelled up is more intersting.
I'm not sure about suspending the bag. I ought to say that I am totally non technical, returning to football for a moment, very much as with my beloved Raiders its all brute force and ignorance with me! The problem with suspending is threefold. Firstly getting the bag to sink in the first place is not easy, i find with a couple of ramikins added for weight it doesnt sink. Secondly you have to secure it. I read about tieing thin fishing line to the bag and running it through the rubber seal on the cornie. When I tried that I didn't get a proper seal and had to abandon it (but see coment above about brute force and ignorance! but whatever you do will have to be strong to support the weight as the keg empties) thirdly I've never had a problem with the outlet pipe being blocked by the bad towards the end.
Reading this again makes me wonder 1. why theres no spellcheck on this and 2 might pellets be easier? Someone must've trued it!

[Morten]

I use two different methods when I dry hop in kegs.

1: If I am using small-ish quantities, I use a 7,5cm tea ball. They keep 12-15 grams of pellets each and is just dumped down the bottom of the keg. No debris.
2: If I am using great amounts of dry hop, I use a fine mesh nylon bag with x grams of pellets suspended with dental floss (without flavour) from the lid.

[orlando]

Reading this again makes me wonder 1. why theres no spellcheck on this and 2 might pellets be easier? Someone must've trued it!

There is a spell checker but it might be my Operating System intervening, what's annoying is it keeps wanting to correct perfectly spelled English words, there IS a u in colour.