Dry hopping at bottling?

Do you think running a finished and primed beer through an ounce or two of leaf hops at bottling time would result in a more fresh aroma than dry hopping for a week or two in secondary? I usually seem to detect a resinous grassy flavor when I dry hop, and really just want the floral/citrus aroma. I was thinking of perhaps plumbing something into my racking hose, or right on the spigot of my bottling bucket.

Has anyone tried this or have any thoughts on the effectiveness? I've heard that Founder's Brewing here in GR does something similar (not confirmed) and I definitely perceive a more intense aroma in the pints there than in a 12oz bottle or even a draft from another bar.

Try it.

You can make an experiment. Rack 1/2 straight into bottles, and the other half through some hop goodness.

What kind of hops, and in what form?

You can also divide up your beer into 3. The first two thirds, as described. with the third that is left in your bucket, you can soak some hops in for an hour, then remove them and bottle the rest.

I would be interested in knowing the results of such an experiment.

I think I saw kegged beer running through a water filter system full of whole hops on this site. Don't have time to search right now, but it was pretty cool. Ed Wort maybe?

Sean said:

I think I saw kegged beer running through a water filter system full of whole hops on this site. Don't have time to search right now, but it was pretty cool. Ed Wort maybe?

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You're talking about a randall. I was thinking the same thing, racking it from your fermenter to your bottling bucket through a randal like device.

ihomebrewing said:

Try it.

You can make an experiment. Rack 1/2 straight into bottles, and the other half through some hop goodness.

What kind of hops, and in what form?

You can also divide up your beer into 3. The first two thirds, as described. with the third that is left in your bucket, you can soak some hops in for an hour, then remove them and bottle the rest.

I would be interested in knowing the results of such an experiment.

Click to expand...

I may just try a comparison. We are talking about a RyePA with all Amarillo leaf hops (Founder's Red's Rye clone).

I like the idea of the beer moving at a slow velocity in and through the hops, maybe something like that randall that Revvy showed. Is that yours, Revvy? Is the flow gravity driven then?

On the other hand, I would prefer the hops to be the last thing the beer sees before hitting the bottle. As I mentioned before, something on the spigot of the bottling bucket perhaps.

You would need a tube. Randall is for pressurized systems.

Stuff your 1ft, 2in tube with hops. Gravity feed through, control the flow, and let it extract some hoppy goodness.

You need a mesh colander sized screen on the bottom end of your tube. Maybe a mesh colander would work

A sanitized hop sock would work as well. Just zip tie it on.

A small funnel will direct it into a bottle.

An extra pair of hands wouldn't hurt

The randal looks like a good idea. Could do with some sort of cylinder with a tube on one end going to the bottling bucket and the bottle filling cane for the other end. Then maybe soak the hops in the beer for and hour or so to make the batch more standardised.

ChillWill said:

The randal looks like a good idea. Could do with some sort of cylinder with a tube on one end going to the bottling bucket and the bottle filling cane for the other end. Then maybe soak the hops in the beer for and hour or so to make the batch more standardised.

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Yes it would be perfect. I have a canister filter that was used for my fish tank, but I think there would be a pretty big loss of liquid and the tubing diameter is way off. Too much work, and also kind of gross :cross:

I'm almost ready to bottle. I will either a) put the 1 oz leaf hops in a bag and weight it down inside the bottling bucket, in fact right in front of the intake, then bottle as usual, or b) use the the bag in a funnel into the bottles. This would be a little of a balancing act so perhaps option a) will prevail.

A "resinous grassy flavour" after "a week or two" of dry-hopping sounds like you've just got too much contact time. Try more hops for three or so days instead of fewer hops for longer.

That said, I like the Randall idea.

staggerlee said:

A "resinous grassy flavour" after "a week or two" of dry-hopping sounds like you've just got too much contact time. Try more hops for three or so days instead of fewer hops for longer.

That said, I like the Randall idea.

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That's my suspicion from the start. So many folks recommend a week for dry hop that I was skeptical that it was too long, but maybe it's just my preference/pallet.

Something to consider is that you definately want to avoid aerating the beer. So if you do use leafs, or a canister, like ChillWill said, you might want to soak them a bit first, and make sure you don't have bubbles floating around in your canister.

Sean said:

Something to consider is that you definately want to avoid aerating the beer. So if you do use leafs, or a canister, like ChillWill said, you might want to soak them a bit first, and make sure you don't have bubbles floating around in your canister.

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Good call.