Dry hopping.

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AshtrayDinner

AshtrayDinner

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Maybe this is a dumb question, but do you guys do anything to your hops to prevent them from infecting the beer when you dry-hop?

Or do you just rack onto the pellets, and leave it at that?
 
I've always just tossed 'em in. No problems so far. Maybe there have been infections from dry hopping with unsanitized hops, but I haven't heard about them.

Rack away!
 
The hops themselves should not infect the beer. But a dirty bag (if you use one) can. I just pour the pellets right into the carboy.
 
I wasn't planning on using any container for the hops, just racking onto them.

I have some vacuum sealed, and thought they might be safer, but I suppose it doesn't make a difference.

It just seems counter intuitive to me, because anything that touches the beer/wort post-cooling should be treated some how.

I feel the same way about adding fruit. I mean isn't it possible that adding fresh fruit, which may have wild yeast on it could contaminate the beer?

Either way, I trust the people on this site. Here goes nothing.
 
Hops are fairly acidic, and are somewhat antimicrobial. Fruit might be a bigger issue, but people still do it.
 
Just rack over them. I always dry hop with whole leaf hops and have never had an infection. Sanitize anything you'll use to get them into your carboy (I use a sanitized funnel). It's been stated that hops have antimicrobial properties and that is true. Think of how IPAs got to be IPAs in the first place - to fight off bacteria. And your beer has produced enough alcohol that it is much less susceptible to infection at this point.
 
AshtrayDinner said:
Maybe this is a dumb question, but do you guys do anything to your hops to prevent them from infecting the beer when you dry-hop?

Or do you just rack onto the pellets, and leave it at that?
Click to expand...

Yes. I clean the package & scissors with Star San or alcohol then I open the package.

THEN (either after cleaning my hands or wearing gloves) after opening the package I pitch 'em in.

Sometime I smile at them.

That's it.
 
So I racked onto the hops without any precautions, and it's about a week later.

It looks like my beer is infected. I will try and post pictures.
 
AshtrayDinner said:
It looks like my beer is infected. I will try and post pictures.
Click to expand...

Please do post pictures. The chance that it is actually infected is quite rare. With how much beer is produced on this message board, I really don't see much of any that actually turn out to be real infections. 99.9% of the infection threads are nervous new-brewers.
Now we can't rule out an infection without seeing pictures or being there, keep in mind that your final product looks WAY DIFFERENT than what you should see in your fermentor. All fermenting beer will have bubbles, chunks, white floaties, surface layers of some sort.
 
This beer had been sitting for at least 2-3 weeks before I added the dry-hops.

Prior to the dry-hopping, the surface of the beer was completely still. Once the hops were added, nothing happened visually for roughly a week. All I noticed was the hops disintegrating, and floating on the beers surface.

Last night (7 days past dry hopping) I noticed pond scum bubbles, and a Grey powdery substance on the surface.

Pictures are coming, but I don't want to move the carboy, because it will upset the scum.
Since I don't have a digital camera, I'm moving my computer and using the web-cam, so bear with me.
 
Here goes.

photo5dnn.jpg

photo6t.jpg

photo11lf.jpg

I know the pics could be better, but you see the pond scum bubbles and solid matter?
 
Doesn't look infected to me. I recently dry hopped for the first time. I just tossed the pellets in. From what I saw I think the hops might have spurred a little further fermintation, I could be wrong, but mine looked similar to that. I am drinking the Pale Ale I dry hopped right now and it is great. I would like to hear from some of the experts on here, but I think your beer is just fine. It looks tasty!!!!!!
 
Give it a smell and/or taste. If it is infected you'll know.

BTW, that looks like a very bad place to have a fermenter. I'd move it away from the blower vent.

You dry hopped the way everyone dry hops. Don't worry. Prolly the hop pellets fell to the bottom, hydrated, and hop oils and residue are floating back to the surface, waving to you. Just wave back.
 
Asa general proposition Hops won't carry infections and contribute to the hostile environment that prevents beer infections.

What TCORY77 about maybe reigniting fermentation is also spot on. The hops or bits of hops floating on the surface will bring whatever oxygen they carried with them into the brew and can help get a little bit of primary ferment restarted but if that's the case it'll subside quickly. There is not enough sugar or oxygen to have a full on primary re-ignition.

I'd let it run it's course and see what develops.

But that said there are infections you can get.

Here's a list of the things I know of that infect beer, you can google any of them:

Gram-Positive Bacteria
• Lactobacillus Brevis
• Lactobacillus spp.
• Pediococcus spp.

Gram-Negative Bacteria
• Acetic Acid Bacteria
• Zymomonas spp.
• Pectinatus spp.
• Enterobacteriaceae spp.

Wild Yeasts
• Saccharomyces spp.
• Non-Saccharomyces spp.
• Brettanomyces spp.
• Torulopsis, Pichia, and Candida spp.

Molds
• Fusarium mycotoxins ( a mold that develops in the malt and is extinguished in the boil, but not all the toxins will be denatured)
 
Well thanks for the advice. Naturally I will be drinking this beer one way or another, if it tastes fine.

I have had this happen four times this fall, and had previously never seen such activity in the carboy. I am beginning to think my apartment is full of bacteria, and the air the carboy sucks in while siphoning is contaminating the beer.

I will suspend my judgment until I get to taste the beer.

Still, it makes me uncomfortable when a beers surface is completely still for several weeks, and then breaks out into (gross looking) activity. Plus the presence of the powdery, mildew like Grey solid substance, on the surface, is very unsettling.

My OG was 1.059. The final gravity stabilized at 1.014.
If the beer over-attenuates, this is a bad sign yes?


And for the record, the dehumidifier is off. I've only used it twice, when the apartment flooded.
 
AshtrayDinner said:
W. Plus the presence of the powdery, mildew like Grey solid substance, on the surface, is very unsettling.
Click to expand...

Except for the powdery part that is the exact - I mean SPORT ON DEAD EXACT- same impression I had the first time I tried an ale yeast. I had a weak pitch, the start was terribly slow and when it finally did start it looked like you described.

Except for the powdery part.

I'd want to take that out with some beer let it settle up in a little covered glass or cup or bowl and examine it closely.

Yeast won't be powdery, but it might fool the eye looking through the carboy.

When did the apartment flood?
Is this the first brew since?
Did you have mold?

If you have residual mold spend the $80.00 or so and get yourself a case of Sporcidin. Spray it from a gallon sprayer without dilution on all exposed wood and other affected surfaces. you can use it as a rug wash instead of that stupid crap the rug Dr machines recommend - - that stuff is just mold fertilizer anyway being nitrogen and phosphorous rich soap.

Unless you kill 'em, mold spores can live for many decades just waiting for the right conditions.
 
I moved into this apartment in October, and had two small floods. I think they were in November, and December, during the bad rain. Both were relatively small, and cleaned up quickly. I didn't notice any mold, but mold can live in places not visible to me.

I've brewed easily twenty batches of beer before, and used ale yeast for every one. Plus this activity began at least two weeks after the fermentation had finished. I also now have airlock activity, where there was none before.

The powdery substance is highly visible, and in several places. If you look in my pictures you can see a rather large chunk close to the bottom left side. I wish I had a better camera so I could provide better pictures.

I'm going to keg and taste it tomorrow one way or another. Maybe I can isolate some of the powdery substance and take a better photo of it.
I will also check the gravity to see if it has dropped.
Thanks for your help. I'll let you know what I find out tomorrow.
 
AshtrayDinner said:
The powdery substance is highly visible,
Click to expand...

Well my curiosity is about the powdery aspect.
I don't know of any beer, wine, champagne or bread yeast that will make a puffy powdery substance. It may appear to the eye to have such a texture, but the powdery characteristic will not stand up to physical inspection when you touch it. Which is to say there won't be anything puffing away and floating in the air as might happen with molds.
It won't feel dry to the touch if it's yeast.
Molds can make a puffy floating dust when disturbed. That's the spore being released. Not all molds release spore that way, but I don't know of any yeasts that do. So if it did that, I'd not think it was yeast.
 
Only trick with dry hopping is to stop the hops from getting contaminated. Specifically, i think someone here, (the Pol?) infected his batch when he used a scale with grain dust on it to measure the hops. Keep your grain and hops as far separated as possible, (I give my scale a good spray down with cleaner/water/starsan before weighing hops), and you should be fine.
 
The powdery substance was sort of a blue/gray dusting on the top of the surface. I wasn't able to get a sample of it unfortunately. I wish I had a higher quality camera.

I think I have good reason to think this batch(and others) have been infected.

I doubt it was bacteria on the hops. I think it is more likely that my apartment is incubating a number of bacterias, or wild yeasts, that are getting into my beer when I rack from container to container.

My Final Gravity on the I.P.A dropped from 1.014 to 1.010 after I racked it the last time. This was after sitting at 1.014 for a couple weeks.

Does anyone have any idea how I can keep dirty air from infecting my beer? Rack outside maybe? This is getting very frustrating. I believe I've had an infection in my: Christmas ale, Blonde ale, India Pale Ale, and Chocolate porter.
Prior to this fall, and moving into this apartment I've never had any problems like this, unless I was extremely careless about cleanliness.

All four of those beers seemed very healthy, until I racked them. Then fermentation seems to restart, but with all kinds of gross, out of the ordinary characteristics.

Can anyone shed some light on this for me? It is extremely frustrating to think I wont be able to brew until I move again.
 
AshtrayDinner said:
The powdery substance was sort of a blue/gray dusting on the top of the surface. I wasn't able to get a sample of it unfortunately. I wish I had a higher quality camera.

I think I have good reason to think this batch(and others) have been infected.

I doubt it was bacteria on the hops. I think it is more likely that my apartment is incubating a number of bacterias, or wild yeasts, that are getting into my beer when I rack from container to container.

My Final Gravity on the I.P.A dropped from 1.014 to 1.010 after I racked it the last time. This was after sitting at 1.014 for a couple weeks.

Does anyone have any idea how I can keep dirty air from infecting my beer? Rack outside maybe? This is getting very frustrating. I believe I've had an infection in my: Christmas ale, Blonde ale, India Pale Ale, and Chocolate porter.
Prior to this fall, and moving into this apartment I've never had any problems like this, unless I was extremely careless about cleanliness.

All four of those beers seemed very healthy, until I racked them. Then fermentation seems to restart, but with all kinds of gross, out of the ordinary characteristics.

Can anyone shed some light on this for me? It is extremely frustrating to think I wont be able to brew until I move again.
Click to expand...

I have no experience with wild yeasts, but I bet you could purge each container, (carboy, ale pail, even bottles), with CO2.

Something like this:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/default/soda-keg-co2-charger.html

With a bit of tubing would allow you to purge your vessels on the fly, without a huge equipment purchase.

Dunno if it will help or not though :confused:
 

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