GVH Drying Method

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cernst151 said:
...I have had a few very good commercial wet hop beers but I can say that the last 2 years I used wet hops from my bines in my beer and each time they came out tasting too grassy so this year I've decided to dry my hops...
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I believe the "grassy" flavor usually comes from farnese, which is also the oil that evaporates first. I haven't tried anything, but I suspect if you dry it above 80F but below 100F for just a few hours you could get rid of the grassy while still having something close to a wet hop.
 
Guilty. My dad got me into woodcraft at a really early age so I could help him.
We went beyond furniture and cabinets to building a super-insulated vacation home in the White Mountains which is still in the family ~30 years later.

And all the power tools I bought him over the years came back to me, which is actually a pretty neat thing, as he haunts my shop (in a good way :))

Cheers!
 
This is a great thread so far; I love the skeptical, scientific approach.

One question: you emphasize opening a window to get fresh air in to whatever room we are using to dry our hops. But, say I'm drying in a basement where I have a dehumidifier running 24/7 directly adjacent to the hops drying apparatus; I don't see any reason why I'd need to open a window.

Do you agree?
 
I would agree, depending on just how much you're going to be drying at a time.

As you'd imagine there's an initial burst of humidity that will likely give your dehumidifier a challenge for a half-dozen hours or so, but then it rolls off to a dragon tail (a long shallow drop to goal) that shouldn't be too hard to keep up with if the unit is of reasonable capability.

It's probably not going to be as efficient as a strong outdoor air exchange, but I don't think you're going to have rain clouds in the basement, either ;)

Cheers!
 
I did my first batch on my setup, the one that clearly wasn't made by the cabinet maker. ;) I only found about 8 wet oz that were ripe so I dried that as my test batch. After reading what DVH said earlier I was shooting for eliminating 85-90% water weight even though most calculations I've heard for using wet hops in brewing said to use about 4oz wet in place of 1oz dry.

After 24 hours I got rid of 74% of the weight (I'm also in a basement with a dehumidifier) and in the next 24 hours I only got rid of another 2%. I'm thinking 3/4 water weight is about what I can expect to get rid of from my hops, though maybe this first batch was just unusually dry already. I just didn't want to over dry them and have them break up and leave my precious lupulin on my dirty basement floor.
 
cernst151 said:
I did my first batch on my setup, the one that clearly wasn't made by the cabinet maker. ;) I only found about 8 wet oz that were ripe so I dried that as my test batch. After reading what DVH said earlier I was shooting for eliminating 85-90% water weight even though most calculations I've heard for using wet hops in brewing said to use about 4oz wet in place of 1oz dry.

After 24 hours I got rid of 74% of the weight (I'm also in a basement with a dehumidifier) and in the next 24 hours I only got rid of another 2%. I'm thinking 3/4 water weight is about what I can expect to get rid of from my hops, though maybe this first batch was just unusually dry already. I just didn't want to over dry them and have them break up and leave my precious lupulin on my dirty basement floor.
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It would take a really warm and dry room, and a long time (say a week or more) to get them over-dry. I just dry them for a couple days until they are really light and call it good.

I can't remember if we covered it in this thread or I read it somewhere else, but the commercial guys need to have a narrow range of %moisture because of the pelletizing process. For brewing, 15% moisture is plenty dry.

(confirmation Dan??)
 
mthompson said:
I can't remember if we covered it in this thread or I read it somewhere else, but the commercial guys need to have a narrow range of %moisture because of the pelletizing process. For brewing, 15% moisture is plenty dry.

(confirmation Dan??)
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Sorry, I was out harvesting. We just got 2 acres off today and into the dryer.

Anyway, yes 15% should be OK. Anything under 20%, as long as you are going to freeze them until use is probably fine.

If they are to be pelletized, they need to be in the 8% to 12% range. Above that and they are too wet to compress effectively. They key thing here is to understand that moisture makes a difference in your recipes.

Lets start with 1 oz of dry matter (no water at all). If I added enough water to get it to 8% MC, that would weigh 1.09 oz...not a big deal. If I took it to 12%, it would weigh 1.14 oz. Now taking it to 20%, it would weigh 1.25 oz. Keep going to 40% and it would weigh 1.7 oz. Knowing about where your moisture content is can be important to your recipe.
 
Now with regard to what weight to stop drying. If you were one a small scale commercial grower, I would insist you do a moisture content analysis...but that takes about 1/3 gallon of hops to do correctly, which is most of your harvest.

Instead, let's assume that at the time of harvest you are somewhere between 72% and 80%. (80% would be too early. 78% is better but many pick early.) So let's go in the middle and say you started at 75% and got 10 oz (wet) off your plant.

The formula is:

Moisture Content = (Wet Weight - Dry Weight)/ Wet Weight x 100%

Wet Weight = starting weight
Dry Weight = dry matter, not water at all

So if we started with 10 oz wet at 75% MC, that means our Dry Weight is 2.5 grams...(10-2.5)/10 x 100% = 75%

If I wanted to dry to 20% MC, my final (wet) weight would be 3.125 oz

(3.125 - 2.5)/3.125 x 100% = 20%

This would be 3.125/10 = .3125 or 31% of my original weight.

Following the same math in the best table form I can achieve here:

MC [%]...........% of original weight
25%.......................33.5%
20%.......................31%
15%.......................29.4%
12%.......................28.4%
10%.......................27.8%
8%........................27.2%
 
kleinstadt said:
This is a great thread so far; I love the skeptical, scientific approach.

One question: you emphasize opening a window to get fresh air in to whatever room we are using to dry our hops. But, say I'm drying in a basement where I have a dehumidifier running 24/7 directly adjacent to the hops drying apparatus; I don't see any reason why I'd need to open a window.

Do you agree?
Click to expand...

It depends on the amount of hops you are drying, the time you take and the size of your dehumidfier.

If I had 1 pound (wet) of hops to dry and I wanted to get down to 15% moisture content, using my previous post, that would mean I have about .7 lbs of water to remove.

.7 pounds of water is about .08 gallons or .64 pints. This probably wouldn't overwhelm a 40 pint (per day) residential dehumidifier in a basement. The biggest problem there is the basement may not be dry enough to ever get it dry enough, but that's another topic.

Now lets say you are an avid homegrower and you have 10 lbs wet...that's 64 pints of water to remove. Your dehumdifier will be overwhelmed and you will have a very damp basement or whatever room you have shut those hops up in.
 
day_trippr said:
I would agree, depending on just how much you're going to be drying at a time.

As you'd imagine there's an initial burst of humidity that will likely give your dehumidifier a challenge for a half-dozen hours or so, but then it rolls off to a dragon tail (a long shallow drop to goal) that shouldn't be too hard to keep up with if the unit is of reasonable capability.

It's probably not going to be as efficient as a strong outdoor air exchange, but I don't think you're going to have rain clouds in the basement, either ;)

Cheers!
Click to expand...


Am d


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Hey Dan, I know how it is when you're harvesting all day. Might make you miscalculate something at the end of the day due to being tired, and probably a little buzzed from the after work beers. :cross: The below calculation would yield about 7 pints from 10 pounds. 100 pounds would yield closer to the 64 pints you referenced.

Glad you broke it down like this too. It helps me understand how much water I'll be getting when I fill our oast, which only uses dehumidification. We went this route because of all the info you've provided on using less heat. Very appreciated.

Here's a link to the beginning of that oast. Should be able to handle 200 pounds a day. Not huge, but enough for us, for now.
https://www.facebook.com/CentralPen...0.1409144374./322899357884523/?type=1&theater

GVH_Dan said:
It depends on the amount of hops you are drying, the time you take and the size of your dehumidfier.

If I had 1 pound (wet) of hops to dry and I wanted to get down to 15% moisture content, using my previous post, that would mean I have about .7 lbs of water to remove.

.7 pounds of water is about .08 gallons or .64 pints. This probably wouldn't overwhelm a 40 pint (per day) residential dehumidifier in a basement. The biggest problem there is the basement may not be dry enough to ever get it dry enough, but that's another topic.

Now lets say you are an avid homegrower and you have 10 lbs wet...that's 64 pints of water to remove. Your dehumdifier will be overwhelmed and you will have a very damp basement or whatever room you have shut those hops up in.
Click to expand...
 
I think I over dried my first batch. They now have virtually no hop aroma and just smell like dried leaves. I'll try drying the next batch for less time and see how it goes. If GVH is right that the grassiness evaporates first that might help.
 
"over dried" usually means they are under 5% moisture content and have turned to dust. I've done that but the dust still smelled pretty good.

Did you use heat? Usually if I see hops that have no smell, they will also be the color of straw. It usually means too much heat was used in the drying.
 
Great thread. I know a bit about grain drying and have my first hops ready to be picked soon. Really appreciate all the tutorial here :)
 
GVH_Dan said:
"over dried" usually means they are under 5% moisture content and have turned to dust. I've done that but the dust still smelled pretty good.

Did you use heat? Usually if I see hops that have no smell, they will also be the color of straw. It usually means too much heat was used in the drying.
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Well they certainly hadn't turned to dust. They looked perfect but just had no real hop scent. They just smelled like a pile of leaves.

The only "heat" was having the dehumidifier running in the room. It was pretty warm in the room but not hot. Certainly not as hot as your average dehydrator.

Over the weekend I harvested and dried all of my Cascades. I'll do the Centennials this week. I dried these a lot less. After drying about 65% of the weight out of the Cascades I ended up with 13.5oz and they're also missing that nice strong hop aroma I get from the store bought stuff.

Is there anything that can be done in the growing process to improve the aroma/flavor of hops? Everything I've read talks about how to increase yield but I have yet to find anything about improving the quality.

I plan on brewing 2 identical IPAs. One with just my homegrown Centennials and one with just homegrown Cascades. Maybe I'll do a third and use store bought hops as a control group.
 
cernst151 said:
Well they certainly hadn't turned to dust. They looked perfect but just had no real hop scent. They just smelled like a pile of leaves.

The only "heat" was having the dehumidifier running in the room. It was pretty warm in the room but not hot. Certainly not as hot as your average dehydrator.

Over the weekend I harvested and dried all of my Cascades. I'll do the Centennials this week. I dried these a lot less. After drying about 65% of the weight out of the Cascades I ended up with 13.5oz and they're also missing that nice strong hop aroma I get from the store bought stuff.

Is there anything that can be done in the growing process to improve the aroma/flavor of hops? Everything I've read talks about how to increase yield but I have yet to find anything about improving the quality.

I plan on brewing 2 identical IPAs. One with just my homegrown Centennials and one with just homegrown Cascades. Maybe I'll do a third and use store bought hops as a control group.
Click to expand...

What year are these plants? It takes about three seasons to really have the best production quality/quantity.

Did you pick them at the peak of 'ripeness'? Home growers have the luxury of waiting an extra week before harvesting which allows for peak flavor maturation. I let mine grow until they begin to turn brown on the tips of most of the bracts...later than commercial growers would, but not so long that they are past ripe and start getting skunky.

Are you crushing the cones before you smell them?

If you pull one apart, are the lupulin glands school bus yellow or darker?



A lot goes into the outcome...moisture, nutrients and chemistry of the soil, sunlight and latitude, etc. All play a role in the outcome and all are variable year to year, so too are the alpha-acids and other compounds.

I would certainly recommend doing a simple SMaSH recipe with each variety to see how the hops perform for you.
 
cernst151 said:
Is there anything that can be done in the growing process to improve the aroma/flavor of hops? Everything I've read talks about how to increase yield but I have yet to find anything about improving the quality.
Click to expand...

Where are you located? You may be picking too early in the year. We're here in Madison, WI and we have not started our Cascade harvest yet.

Honestly, there is little you can do to effect the quality of the cone during the growing season. As long as you are doing everything right to increase yield, the plant will have all it needs. The only other things that effect quality are drought, heat and insect stress. The first two you really cant do much about other than water them. The last is a tough thing because insect stress often comes on too quickly for you to react and in some cases actually creates some desirable flavors.

If you pick too early, though, then you get them before all the oil, aromas and alpha acids develop. Wait a bit longer before picking the rest.
 
mthompson said:
What year are these plants? It takes about three seasons to really have the best production quality/quantity.

Did you pick them at the peak of 'ripeness'? Home growers have the luxury of waiting an extra week before harvesting which allows for peak flavor maturation. I let mine grow until they begin to turn brown on the tips of most of the bracts...later than commercial growers would, but not so long that they are past ripe and start getting skunky.

Are you crushing the cones before you smell them?

If you pull one apart, are the lupulin glands school bus yellow or darker?

A lot goes into the outcome...moisture, nutrients and chemistry of the soil, sunlight and latitude, etc. All play a role in the outcome and all are variable year to year, so too are the alpha-acids and other compounds.

I would certainly recommend doing a simple SMaSH recipe with each variety to see how the hops perform for you.
Click to expand...

This is their third year of growing but my first year of drying. In the past I've felt like I got very grassy flavors in my fresh hop IPAs and figured it was because I was using them wet. This year, partly because of previous flavors and partly because of the high yield, I decided to dry them.

I always have a hard time pegging whether they're entirely ripe. They feel and sound papery, smell fairly hoppy on the vine, pop back to their shape when crushed and a lot have brown tips, though some are still pretty pale green. I'll double check the color of the lupulin. I'm also getting a microscope off Craigslist because another thread on HBT showed how you can tell if the lupulin glands are ready.
 
GVH_Dan said:
Where are you located? You may be picking too early in the year. We're here in Madison, WI and we have not started our Cascade harvest yet.

Honestly, there is little you can do to effect the quality of the cone during the growing season. As long as you are doing everything right to increase yield, the plant will have all it needs. The only other things that effect quality are drought, heat and insect stress. The first two you really cant do much about other than water them. The last is a tough thing because insect stress often comes on too quickly for you to react and in some cases actually creates some desirable flavors.

If you pick too early, though, then you get them before all the oil, aromas and alpha acids develop. Wait a bit longer before picking the rest.
Click to expand...

I'm in Minneapolis, so not far from you. I was planning on waiting but so many of the cones had brown dried tips already I didn't want to risk it. Last year I waited too long and had to throw out a lot of dry brown cones. I'll give the Centennials a bit longer and keep my fingers crossed.

We had a pretty wet spring and I watered them occasionally in the summer when it was dry. Only a couple cones showed signs of insect damage.
 
I just harvested Centennials in the middle of last week. My Cascades are just starting to look like I should be checking them daily....still a few days out for them right now.

I have to go to my sister-in-law's to check some Glaciers she has for "decoration" on a pergola....on my recommendation. :D
 
GVH_Dan said:
Step 4: Lowering the relative humidity if needed.

For the homegrower, you want to get the moisture content of the hops down to 15% or less. Commercial growers are shooting for 12% or less depending on what is to be done for further processing.

Some of you (e.g. Colorado, Arizona, Nevada) will easily be able to reach that level using only outside air in 48 hours. The rest of us may need some help, especially if it is a humid week.

Again, the lower the relative humidity, the larger the driving force to pull moisture out of the hops and into the air. The big guys in the PNW achieve this by heating the air up so the whole drying process can be completed in 24 hours. Are you in that big of a rush? Probably not. So slow down and let them dry at lower temperatures.

If you have gone 2 days and they are not dry, its probably time to take it to the next step. On ideal location for most homegrowers is in an air conditioned house is wonderful but most SWMBO won’t put up with that smell.

Your next best option is to put them in a closet with a dehumidifier. If there is no closet available, get a tarp or piece of plastic and build a little tent around the hops and the dehumidifier. The smaller the space, the faster the hops will dry. If you try to dehumidify a large space (e.g. basement, kitchen) or a leaky space (e.g. garage), the dehumidifier will be too busy with that load to be able to take care of your hops. If you put them in a tiny place, the dehumidifier should quickly dry the hops out.
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I have an aluminum bakery cart, shelves with screen, fan, and this humidity controller http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009VY1BZY/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Im all set - everything is wired up but I'm not sure of a location for the humidity probe. The fan will be on top blowing air out the bottom. Whats your opinion - where should I place the probe?
Thoughts about the whole process?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
First, sorry it took so long but I've been out of the country...no internet.

Tell me more. where will the bakery cart be located? Will it get outside air or air from a room?

Honestly, the humidity probe isn't entirely needed. As I mentioned, I will run the dryer using outside air for a day or two to get moisture out. this has to be outside air. If its air from inside a closed room, that room will quickly become saturated.

After a couple of days, the easiest way to finish the drying is to close the room off or somehow isolated the dryer and a dehumidfier in a closed room or tent it off with plastic and let the dehumidfier pull the rest of the moisture out. In this case, the humidity probe will see an RH above 90%. Most likely, you won't see a drop in RH until the hops are allready over dried. You need to weigh a sample of hops to track the moisture content.
 
Hello.

I have dried hops in the past, on a window screen in my attic. I haven't used any in a brew yet!

I think the attic is ideal: 90-100 degrees F in august = low humidity. I have a full ridge vent, which provides escape for the moisture. I normally put a few ounces on a window screen (single layer of cones), and blow across the screen with a simple oscillating fan. If memory serves, I think they dried down in 2 days or so.

Thoughts on this approach?
 
mike_57401 said:
Hello.

I have dried hops in the past, on a window screen in my attic. I haven't used any in a brew yet!

I think the attic is ideal: 90-100 degrees F in august = low humidity. I have a full ridge vent, which provides escape for the moisture. I normally put a few ounces on a window screen (single layer of cones), and blow across the screen with a simple oscillating fan. If memory serves, I think they dried down in 2 days or so.

Thoughts on this approach?
Click to expand...
That works. Ideally, you want to be a little lower in temperature as you will loose some of the oils but it won't be a lot. I tell my growers to never go above 100F.

Now brew with some of those and see how they work.
 
GVH_Dan said:
Outside is fine but go for shade. UV light degrades the alpha acids. So keep them out of direct sunlight.
Click to expand...

This is the bakery cart so it will be very dark inside.

20150226_154627.jpg
 
Here you all go. GVH Dryer prototype number 7.0.

The first picture is the drying bed only. The fan section has not been attached at this point. Load out doors are open to show a bed suitable for right around the daily harvest output of a Wolf 170.

The second picture shows the doors opening to a couple feet of Centennials that came out yesterday. The white mesh is the conveyor belt to unload them onto the conveyor belt we haven't finished yet. (Hence the blue tarp.) Also, sorry about the color rendering. The hops aren't actually yellow. Its just a cruddy camera.

Mega-dryer.jpg


Mega-dryer full.jpg
 
GVH_Dan said:
Here you all go. GVH Dryer prototype number 7.0.

The first picture is the drying bed only. The fan section has not been attached at this point. Load out doors are open to show a bed suitable for right around the daily harvest output of a Wolf 170.

The second picture shows the doors opening to a couple feet of Centennials that came out yesterday. The white mesh is the conveyor belt to unload them onto the conveyor belt we haven't finished yet. (Hence the blue tarp.) Also, sorry about the color rendering. The hops aren't actually yellow. Its just a cruddy camera.
Click to expand...

That's really cool!
 
Yep. Those doors are 2 feet and the pile goes a bit above that. I would like to push it to almost 4 feet for testing but I'm not sure our picker/picking crew can get there, at least not this late in the season. Everyone's pretty tired.
 
Some of those centennials look a bit brown. Was this due to the dryer or how they came off the bines. Any concern when they get to that stage?
 
cernst151 said:
Wow, that's incredible. I can't believe you're able to get any airflow through a layer of hops that thick.
Click to expand...

Like I said, its prototype 7.0. Before this there was versions 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc. It took a lot of CFD modeling and experimentation to get to this point.

The biggest issue at really high airflow is to get it flat enough so the hops aren't blowing all over the place. As one of my growers put it with his version 5.3 dryer, "Dan, I've got a hop-nado in here."
 
stpug said:
Some of those centennials look a bit brown. Was this due to the dryer or how they came off the bines. Any concern when they get to that stage?
Click to expand...

Some where a little brown at the start from heavy wind damage. But as I mentioned, they are much greener in real life. The canvas roof of that barn gives everything a yellowish tint combined with the camera on my old Ipod really distorts the picture. The first picture was off a real camera.
 
GVH_Dan said:
Some where a little brown at the start from heavy wind damage. But as I mentioned, they are much greener in real life. The canvas roof of that barn gives everything a yellowish tint combined with the camera on my old Ipod really distorts the picture. The first picture was off a real camera.
Click to expand...

Very good. I'm starting to believe I harvest mine too early. Because mine look too pretty and don't give enough hop juiciness :D
 

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