Squeeze the dry hop bag?

BrewSwag 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
B

bessieflames

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 4, 2011
Messages
98
Reaction score
0
Location
Denver
Quick question: I have been dry-hopping in the keg and when I pull the bag out, I squeeze it to get the majority of the beer out. When I do, a lot of REALLY hoppy beer gets added to the keg. Is this bad? I tasted some of the beer that I squeezed from the bag and it is very bitter. Should I be doing this?
 
Yeah--I dry hop in a keg with the dip tube shortened. I remove the bags and then crash cool to settle the yeast and hop particles. Then I transfer to a serving keg.
 
I just pop the bag in my service keg when I rack to it and leave it. I made my last Pale Ale in July and it lasted on tap until a couple weeks ago, didn't seem to get excessively bitter and by then the whole keg was basically like the inside of your hop bag from an exposure stand point. I should note for this I use whole hops, and I also use a tolerant Lager Yeast for my Pale Ales and IPAs so that may affect things.

To your original question I guess the best answer is does the beer you end up with taste like what you want? I would think squeezing would be fine since the bittering agents need to isomerize in the boil to become water soluble. Was the taste bitter or Tannic? You'll get some of that from the fine particles that come out of the bag. Once it's diluted in a full keg and settles it should be ok.
 
^^^ I'm thinking about just putting a bag of pellet hops in the keg and leaving there until the keg kicks. Do you see any problem with that?

OP, I have zero experience with this. But I would think if they are whole hops a little squeeze wouldn't hurt. If they are pellet hops I believe they have would have served their purpose so don't squeeze, just remove them.
 
If I remove the bag I always squeeze it. Hops are bitter, pop one in your mouth. While you don't get a lot of bitterness into your beer from dry hopping they do impart some bitter flavor.
 
Dan said:
^^^ I'm thinking about just putting a bag of pellet hops in the keg and leaving there until the keg kicks. Do you see any problem with that?
Click to expand...

I can't say I've ever tried it, but if the bag holds on to the bits well enough it seems like it would be fine, otherwise you'll get lots of particulate in your beer.
 
I use whole hops for dry hopping. It technically doesn't impart bitterness units, but it does increase the apparent bitterness. I don't leave them in the keg because they do give a little bit of cloudiness. I like to clear my beers well, so I remove the hops and crash cool it. I have been removing the bag without squeezing it, so I don't know how it will taste. I guess I will report back.
 
I dry hop with whole hops in the keg and leave them in. Today I kicked a SMaSH keg and removed 2 oz of cascade that had been in it for 1.5 months. The hops had no aroma, it had all been taking by the beer. That said I chewed one and immediately got a ton of bitterness.

This beer had great floral aroma for 2 weeks, then kinda faded and just smelled like orange.

I have a Pliny clone dry hopping with 2 oz Simcoe pellets in bucket. I will rack to keg and hop with 2 oz Simcoe and 1 ounce amarillo leaves in the keg.

Leaving the hops in indefinitely doesn't seem to hurt the beer, but it doesn't give any extra aroma after a couple weeks. In the future after 3 weeks I'll remove hops and dry hop again with fresh hops according to how much beer is left.

Edit: also my IPA's with hops in keg are some of my clearest beers.
 
I've been hopping the keg for years...up to an ounce of whole cones or pellets, but only with IPA's. I would never pull the bag out before the keg is kicked because I don't want to stir things up. I use about 3-4 huge stainless steel bolts in the bag so it's laying on the bottom next to the dip tube. Hops oils tend to rise so the bag goes down low.

Recently I've been limiting the pellets to 3/4 oz of low cohumulone hops only. It tends to emit less harshness/perceived bitterness, etc. I also notice that the more beer that gets poured, the less I taste the hops from the bag. If I let it sit without a pour for several days, the first few pours emit stronger hop aroma.

I just tapped a Pliny clone a week and a half ago which uses 13 ozs of hops in a 5 gallon batch and still put 3/4 oz of Simcoe and Columbus in the weighted bag. My suggestion is leave it alone if it's causing a perceived bitterness which is subjective.

The question is, do you like the beer after you squeeze the bag?
 
I squeeze hop bags removed from my wort with stainless tongs that have been sanitized. I guess you could do the same here.
 
Sorry, this is a bit OT.

I don't think sanitization is as critical in beer as it is to fresh wort. The alcohol in the finished product should help fight off bacteria. The last beer I dry hopped I forgot to sanitize the bag and just dropped it into the beer, also I didn't have a lid during the entire month long primary so used a loose fitting cover. The beer turned out fine. Heres to beer! :mug:
 
tesilential said:
I dry hop with whole hops in the keg and leave them in. Today I kicked a SMaSH keg and removed 2 oz of cascade that had been in it for 1.5 months. The hops had no aroma, it had all been taking by the beer. That said I chewed one and immediately got a ton of bitterness.

This beer had great floral aroma for 2 weeks, then kinda faded and just smelled like orange.

I have a Pliny clone dry hopping with 2 oz Simcoe pellets in bucket. I will rack to keg and hop with 2 oz Simcoe and 1 ounce amarillo leaves in the keg.

Leaving the hops in indefinitely doesn't seem to hurt the beer, but it doesn't give any extra aroma after a couple weeks. In the future after 3 weeks I'll remove hops and dry hop again with fresh hops according to how much beer is left.

Edit: also my IPA's with hops in keg are some of my clearest beers.
Click to expand...

I don't just leave the hops in the serving keg because I dry-hop at room temperature. I noticed a really bad off-flavor in three of my kegs. One I know I squeezed the bag and the other I'm not really sure. They might have been squeezed just a little bit to fit them out the opening of the keg. It is the same off-flavor in all of the kegs, and it is way worse in the keg where I squeezed the bag. It is undrinkable to the point where I might pour it out. I have never done that with a beer before but it is really nasty. It has been 4 weeks and it is not going away.

And BTW, I squeeze my bag with a sanitized gloved hand.
 
I actually just stopped putting bags in the kegs all together. I've been doing comparisons and the kegs that have hop bags in them have a grassy off flavor after a week or two. Some (most) of my friends don't taste it, but I do. My last keg has no hops in it and it's just plain better than the previous which came from the same 10 gallon batch...only difference is I dry hopped the one fermenter with an extra 2 ounces of pellets which made it hoppier than any other IPA I've produced, even the one before it with 3/4 ounce of Simcoe in the keg.

I look at it this way, I'm to the point with my hoppy IPA's to where I'm doing tiny little tweaks to make subtle changes in an effort to make the perfect IPA. That said, knowing that hopping the keg makes my beer less desirable than the same beer with just a couple extra ounces of hops in the fermenter, I know what I'll be doing from now on.

If I happen to make a beer that's not hoppy enough, what I will do is temporarily hop the keg by hanging a weighted hop bag inside of the keg that does not touch the bottom. Once the beer peaks out in flavor I will remove the bag to avoid the grassy off flavors as insignificant they may be...I don't want them. I'll be welding a small stainless tab to the inside of my corny lids for hanging hop bags if needed.

I would surely NOT squeeze the hop bags for fear that I may squeeze some weird flavors out of the hops. I used to squeeze them years ago while in the fermenters, but my beer was sub-par back then anyway, so that's something I really don't know about. To me, it takes about 5 ounces of hops in the secondary stage in a five gallon batch to make my beer very, very hoppy.
 
ILBMF said:
I actually just stopped putting bags in the kegs all together. I've been doing comparisons and the kegs that have hop bags in them have a grassy off flavor. Some (most) of my friends don't taste it, but I do. My last keg has no hops in it and it's just plain better than the previous which came from the same 10 gallon batch...only difference is I dry hopped the one fermenter with an extra 2 ounces of pellets which made it hoppier than any other IPA I've produced, even the one before it with 3/4 ounce of Simcoe.
QUOTE]

Yeah--I think I am sticking to dry hopping in the fermenter. Let it ferment 2 weeks, add hops and go another week. I think you need to be gentle with the dry hops or it will give you bad flavors. Live and learn. Wish I didn't ruin 3 kegs before I learned, but that's life.
Click to expand...
 
ILBMF said:
I actually just stopped putting bags in the kegs all together. I've been doing comparisons and the kegs that have hop bags in them have a grassy off flavor after a week or two. Some (most) of my friends don't taste it, but I do.
Click to expand...

I found this too in the first couple weeks, but I do IPA's with a Lager yeast (SafLager W-34/70) and After a month it gets really clean. I think the grassy flavor either gets cleaned up or it breaks down over time.

As to why I use Lager yeast, it tastes more American IPA-ey that way. The hops are crisp and forward, and also it lasts in the keg because Sadly I get to have very little beer.
 
IPA with lager yeast...interesting. I'd like a taste of that.

Another thing I've been doing is dry hop 10-14 days and then of course, I still have hop debris floating in the fermenter. My solution to that? I tie a sanitized fine screen bag to the outlet of my racking hose and just drop it right into the keg. When the beer flows into the keg the bag grabs any hop or large yeast debris. It's really nice because that's just one less thing to worry about. It actually makes for very clean beer especially if I immediately keg and refrigerate it without any priming sugar. A few weeks later I grab the keg, put it in the kegerator and force carbonate it at 45 psi with no yeast to settle out. It's ready over night.

If you ever force carbonate at a high psi like that, make sure you disconnect your liquid ''line out'' from the keg as the hose clamps don't always hold back that kind of pressure. I did that to 2 kegs one night and the next day I had a dripping mess inside of the kegerator. One of the 2 faucets just dripped a little all night from the tower and I had to empty everything out and clean a huge mess from the kegerator and my hardwood floor. Luckily it was the wife's side that leaked. She lost a couple of quarts, not my IPA. That didn't bother her.
 
ILBMF said:
Once the beer peaks out in flavor I will remove the bag to avoid the grassy off flavors as insignificant they may be...I don't want them. I'll be welding a small stainless tab to the inside of my corny lids for hanging hop bags if needed.
Click to expand...

I don't weld but did have a few rare earth magnets left over from a stir plate build that worked decently for suspending a sanitized nylon bag loaded with 2 ounces of leaf hop. I just left it in the keg because the bag only hangs about half way to the bottom so when when the beer gets low enough the hops are not in contact. You can adjust where to hang the bag based on the length of time hops are scheduled to be in contact with beer and how quickly you drink.
 
I like that idea. The only thing is, I would need one magnet inside and one outside of the corny lid as it's stainless steel and magnets won't stick to good quality stainless. I'm going to try this, thanks for the idea. I'd rather not molest my corny lids.
 

Similar threads

Clint Yeastwood
Wort Refuses to Leave Bag
Replies
14
Views
628
odie
odie
Dave77
Squeezing a Dry Hop Bag
Replies
10
Views
1K
redrocker652002
R
C
Maximizing Dry Hop Aroma
Replies
12
Views
2K
OzzyPeeps
OzzyPeeps
S
Dry hop bag question
Replies
17
Views
838
AmarikinBrew
AmarikinBrew
R
Question regarding hops and cooling wort
Replies
30
Views
2K
Broken Crow
Broken Crow

Latest posts

Back
Top