nosnhojr
Well-Known Member
Today I brewed a second batch of IPA, making a few changes in recipe from the first batch. The two biggest changes were to bump up the DME from 6.5 lbs to 8 lbs, and to use whole hops instead of pellets.
The boil went fine, but when it came time to rack into the carboy, things started to fall apart. I'm using a 10gal brewpot with spigot, and in previous brewdays with pellets, I've had good success chilling the wort, whirlpooling for 10 mins, then simply opening the spigot and running the wort through a sanitized strainer/funnel into the carboy. Today, with whole hops, I opened the spigot and got -- nothing!
The whole hops clogged things up, but after sanitizing a thermometer probe, I was able to unclog the spigot and get 2 1/2-3 gals of wort from the brewpot. In the end, I probably left behind a quart of wort mixed with all the hops (4 oz over the last 30 mins, so quite a lot of hop cones).
My OG came out at 1.055, just slightly higher than the 1.052 I got using 6.5 lbs of dme in the previous batch. I was expecting a higher OG, but I think the whole hops kept me from getting all the high-density wort, and when I topped off at 5 gals, the OG obviously dropped.
In retrospect, this all seems obvious, but I've never read about adjusting fermentables based on pellet vs. whole hops. So what should I have done differently? Used some other method to extract more of the wort? Not topped off to 5 gals, but topped off based on my target OG? Something else?
The beer will be great, I'm sure (last one was quite good at 1.052 OG), but I ended the brewday frustrated that I didn't hit my target OG.
Looking forward to some advice on dealing with whole hops in the brewpot.
The boil went fine, but when it came time to rack into the carboy, things started to fall apart. I'm using a 10gal brewpot with spigot, and in previous brewdays with pellets, I've had good success chilling the wort, whirlpooling for 10 mins, then simply opening the spigot and running the wort through a sanitized strainer/funnel into the carboy. Today, with whole hops, I opened the spigot and got -- nothing!
The whole hops clogged things up, but after sanitizing a thermometer probe, I was able to unclog the spigot and get 2 1/2-3 gals of wort from the brewpot. In the end, I probably left behind a quart of wort mixed with all the hops (4 oz over the last 30 mins, so quite a lot of hop cones).
My OG came out at 1.055, just slightly higher than the 1.052 I got using 6.5 lbs of dme in the previous batch. I was expecting a higher OG, but I think the whole hops kept me from getting all the high-density wort, and when I topped off at 5 gals, the OG obviously dropped.
In retrospect, this all seems obvious, but I've never read about adjusting fermentables based on pellet vs. whole hops. So what should I have done differently? Used some other method to extract more of the wort? Not topped off to 5 gals, but topped off based on my target OG? Something else?
The beer will be great, I'm sure (last one was quite good at 1.052 OG), but I ended the brewday frustrated that I didn't hit my target OG.
Looking forward to some advice on dealing with whole hops in the brewpot.