Whole leaf hops brewing question

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craigrigney

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Hello all. I have a quick question. As with all my hobbies, this one is getting out of control. I recently bought a conical stainless fermenter, and love it. I also just started growing my own hops. I made my first batch using the whole leaf hops. With my recipe, I used both whole leaf, and pellet hops. My question is this....when using whole leaf hops, should I strain them out of the wort prior to putting them in the conical fermenter? With the pellets, they would fall to the bottom, and i would use my dump valve. With the whole leaf hops, some float, some don't. Some come out the dump valve, some don't. If I do strain them, will I loose the aroma hops aroma? Thanks in advance.
 
craigrigney said:
Hello all. I have a quick question. As with all my hobbies, this one is getting out of control. I recently bought a conical stainless fermenter, and love it. I also just started growing my own hops. I made my first batch using the whole leaf hops. With my recipe, I used both whole leaf, and pellet hops. My question is this....when using whole leaf hops, should I strain them out of the wort prior to putting them in the conical fermenter? With the pellets, they would fall to the bottom, and i would use my dump valve. With the whole leaf hops, some float, some don't. Some come out the dump valve, some don't. If I do strain them, will I loose the aroma hops aroma? Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Yes, you should strain them out in my opinion, may I suggest using the hop strainer in the diy section, it is a 5 gallon paint strainer, using a 4 inch pvc coupler to hook the strainer to, that will strain 95% of all the hops that you use in the boil, good luck.:mug:
 
jagg said:
Yes, you should strain them out in my opinion
Click to expand...

+1 on that one. You won't loose any flavor or aroma by taking the hops away. From my experience, unless your dry hoping with fresh hops, leaving the old boiled hops in there leaves an unpleasant grassy taste (not the pleasant grassy flavor from dry hoping but the nasty kind).

Cheers!
 
So if I add aroma hops in the last 5 minutes of boil, then strain them out prior to putting them in the fermenter, I will not loose any aroma? I of course trust your judgement or I would not have posted on here, I am just surprised. Thanks!
 
I don't often strain my wort, unless I've used a ton of hops and it'll take up to much room in my fermenter. You won't get "grassy" flavors from them, but they do tend to float around and can clog a siphon.

If you want to strain them out, you certainly can. Once the wort is cooled, you don't get anything more out of them anyway so it doesn't matter if they are strained out or not.
 
hopstopper.jpg


Northern Brewer large strainer bag with metal frame. Works very well, hops are freely circulating in the boil and after wards you can lift it up and allow to drain.

edit
Metal frame was from an old pizza stone.
 

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