Adding Hops During Fermentation?

Well guys, I made what appears to be a pretty stupid mistake that may or may not drastically affect my beer (I'm not too sure what will happen!)

When I was transferring my wort to my fermenter, I sieved my wort on the way in, and trashed the contents of the sieve. I don't know why I thought I was supposed to, but I did! This means lots of hops in the trash, as well as other important stuff. It's been fermenting for about 12 hours now, what should I do? Is my brew destined to be awful? Can I go in now and add some hops? Help!

Many people strain their wort as it goes in the fermentor. You did nothing wrong. No worries!

Yeah, lots of people do this. You'll end up with a cleaner beer faster this way. Don't sweat it!

I routinely hop in the fermenter, but I always do it with fresh hops, never stuff I boiled with. I always strain out my boiled hops. You did nothing wrong

You don't need the hops in there anymore.

That being said, if you want more hop AROMA (not bitterness) you can add some more hops in to your fermenting beer at any point in the process. For bitterness it pretty much had to be added during the boil.

RDWHAHB.

CORRECTION: you should only dry hop after fermentation is complete, because the fermentation may drive off the aroma. Thanks, Yooper!

A related question;

What is a good amount of pellets (Cascade, in my case) to use for a 5 gallon batch? If I want the Cascade 'citrusy' flavor, should I add it with 15 minutes left in the boil, or only dry-hop afterwards?

If it were me I would add 1-3 oz of pellets during the last 3-5 minutes of the boil to pull out those aspects, but I always prefer to use whole leaf hops for flavor and aroma. I know there's a big debate on pellets vs leaf but pellet hops remind me of MSM (mechanically separated meat).

Dry hopping in the primary will get you more aroma and less flavor. You need the heat to really pull flavors out, but not long enough to destroy the volatile oils.

ah thanks guys! I was really scared I messed something up. I might pop a few hop pellets in there today for some aroma. Well, good idea/bad idea?

I started straining on batch 3 and have continued through present (batch 8 or so). Just dont like the chance of that much sediment.

hahareid said:

ah thanks guys! I was really scared I messed something up. I might pop a few hop pellets in there today for some aroma. Well, good idea/bad idea?

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It's not a bad idea or anything, but I can't think of a single reason that you'd want to do that.

First, if you want to dry hop, wait until fermentation is over or nearly over. Any fermentation now will simply "blow off" the aroma that dryhops will give you. In my mind, that seems like a waste of perfectly good hops. But if you wait a week or two, and add an ounce of hops, the dryhopping would be great. Well, depending on the style of beer that is! Some beer styles would be kind of weird with dryhopping, like the maltier beers or a stout!