Beer won't stop fermenting, take it off the dry hop?

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patd

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Follow up to my previous thread - to recap, my IPA was below the target FG for the recipe (target was 1.014 and I was at 1.012) so I moved it to the secondary for the 5-7 day dry hop. The next day it started bubbling again and the gravity started dropping. It's now 11 days in secondary with a lot of hops, and just took a reading and it's still slowly dropping (now at 1.007, was 08 yersterday).

So my question in...should I try and get the hops out of there so it doesn't get too bitter? The hops are all over the place with the fermenting going on, so all I can think to do is put a grain bag over the tip of the siphon, transfer to to the bottling bucket, clean out the secondary, then move it back in. Am i risking too much oxygenation by doing that, should I just accept its going to be a mouth puckering hop bomb and leave it be?

Advice is appreciated :)
 
patd said:
Follow up to my previous thread - to recap, my IPA was below the target FG for the recipe (target was 1.014 and I was at 1.012) so I moved it to the secondary for the 5-7 day dry hop. The next day it started bubbling again and the gravity started dropping. It's now 11 days in secondary with a lot of hops, and just took a reading and it's still slowly dropping (now at 1.007, was 08 yersterday).

So my question in...should I try and get the hops out of there so it doesn't get too bitter? The hops are all over the place with the fermenting going on, so all I can think to do is put a grain bag over the tip of the siphon, transfer to to the bottling bucket, clean out the secondary, then move it back in. Am i risking too much oxygenation by doing that, should I just accept its going to be a mouth puckering hop bomb and leave it be?

Advice is appreciated :)
Click to expand...

You shouldn't get any noticeable bitterness from dry hopping even if the beer is still fermenting. Relax and let it do it's thing there's not much you can do now. Worst that happens is you lose a little hop aroma. If it's not hoppy enough when it's finished you can always add a little more dry hops.
 
You won't get much bitterness from a dry hop, no matter how long you leave it. What you risk by dry hopping too long is to develop a vegetal flavor from sitting on the hops too long. At least that's what they say. I was in your shoes with my APA and left it on dry hop for an obscene amount of time and I won awards with it. :mug:

Was the SG stable before you started to dry hop? If it was, and was at the expected FG, then it started dropping after you started your dry hop, I would worry about the possibility of infection. Probably not, but something to watch for.
 
It will be fine.

My guess is this is occuring with whole hops and not pellets?
Sometimes when you dry hop with whole hops you'll get foaming from the CO2 release.
It gets caught up in the hops.
 
Unfortunately i didn't check for a stable FG, just saw it was below target and shot it over to secondary. Lesson learned.

This was pellets, but a lot of them had been crushed. I initially tried to put them in a hop sock and force them down the neck of the carboy, but it was too much and I gave up after 5 minutes and poured them through a funnel.

Hopefully it's not an infection! I had handled the hop bag a lot trying to cram it down in there, my hands were cleaned and dipped in sanitizer, but I was worried about it once I finally got it all in there.
 
Update: down to 1.006 today. If nothing else, I'm sure I won't have the "tastes too sweet" issue of my previous brews...there will be no sugar left in there!
 
I wonder how accurate are hydrometer readings?

If you are taking a sample off the top, will the gravity reading be different than a sample off the bottom of a carboy?
 
ChshreCat said:
Where're you getting that? According the the main page we're at "Posts: 1,960,164".
Click to expand...

Eh just going off the post number (permalink), didn't know there was a number on the main page :)

The direct link to the above post is
Code: 
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/beer-wont-stop-fermenting-take-off-dry-hop-172626/#post2000000

Which you can see shows #Post2000000

P.S. Sorry to threadjack, back to beer!
 
humann_brewing said:
dang that is low, what was the starting gravity?
Click to expand...

1.062. Recipe had it at 1.074 so I either didn't do the mini-mash part right, or didn't mix up top off well enough. I'd guess the former since it was my first mini-mash. I'm surprised at how low it has gone, my problem is usually ending too high, not too low :)
 
patd said:
1.062. Recipe had it at 1.074 so I either didn't do the mini-mash part right, or didn't mix up top off well enough. I'd guess the former since it was my first mini-mash. I'm surprised at how low it has gone, my problem is usually ending too high, not too low :)
Click to expand...

it happens I guess, I had a brew go from 1.062 to 1.008 but that was on a yeast cake and it did that in like 24 hours :cross:
 

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