First IPA Questions

Hello All! The wife and I just got through bottling our first attempt at an IPA, second batch overall. We both have a couple of quick questions, however...

We utilized a hop bag when we put the beer in the secondary (which was a pain in the behind to get out, by the way), but when we took it out, it didn't look like the hops had "bloomed" for lack of a better word. In other words, it seemed like some of the middle of the hops was still dry....sounds crazy, I know. Is this normal?

This was the recipe that we used:

http://www.tastybrew.com/newrcp/detail/5. We switched it up to use 1/2 lb british dark, 1/2 lb british medium, and 1.5 lbs two row pale malt.

Maybe I have the new brew jitters. I guess I'll have a few beers and hope for the best....I'll let you know how it turns out in a couple of weeks.

Did you rack the wort onto the bagged hops or put the hops in after transferring to your secondary? I have dry-hopped both using a bag and without. Either way I put the hops into the carboy and then rack on top of them trying to wet them as much as possible without introducing oxygen. It does seem when using a bag that I have had more cones floating dry above the surface of the wort and they are more packed together in general maybe not getting as saturated into the wort. Without a bag they seem to settle into the wort better and all of them get wet.

I transferred the wort to the secondary, and the added the hop bag. There's my trouble. hope it still works out!

Another trick is to put a few sterilized marbles or stainless steel bolts in the hop bag to make it sink.

I still think you can get better hop saturation by not using a bag. I have added straight unbagged hops to already transferred beer and had no problem with hops sinking into the wort. With bagged hops I can see how adding hops after transferring would be a problem. I still do use bags when I end up with slightly less wort volume.

old forum, but great question. when I "dry" hop, I like to sterilize the hops in hard alcohol, then add the whole shebang to the secondary and rack on top of it.

if you have a lot of booze around, you can have some fun pairing flavors. (If not, its not a huge deal, as we're only talking 1/2 - 1 C of alcohol into a 5+ gallon batch of beer.) Bourbons go great with darker beers. Scotch is too flavorful for really light beers. Vodka and gin are great for wheats. Etc.

Cheers!

boozehoundbrew said:

old forum, but great question. when I "dry" hop, I like to sterilize the hops in hard alcohol, then add the whole shebang to the secondary and rack on top of it.

if you have a lot of booze around, you can have some fun pairing flavors. (If not, its not a huge deal, as we're only talking 1/2 - 1 C of alcohol into a 5+ gallon batch of beer.) Bourbons go great with darker beers. Scotch is too flavorful for really light beers. Vodka and gin are great for wheats. Etc.

Cheers!

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Why do you want to sterilize the hops when one of their primary functions is as a preservative?

RM-MN said:

Why do you want to sterilize the hops when one of their primary functions is as a preservative?

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+1 on this one

I like the marble idea a lot, I'll probably do this with the IPA I'll be brewing on Sunday!