More IBU needed, post kegging

So long story short, I bombed my rye ipa recipe. I'm left with an overly sweet beer. I'm looking to add some ibu's. My question is, can I boil some hops in water and then add the water to my keg?

Seems I would get very good utilization and have a nice concentrated liquid to pour in the keg.

Any ideas?

Todd

You could definitely do that. You might want to add a touch maltodextrin or some other sort of unfermentable carb just to make sure you don't water your beer down. You should also calculate your evap rate to make sure you end up with a very small amount a hyper-concentrated hop tea.

Since the best you can do is 90-100 IBU, you won't get much increase. Say you boil up two quarts at 90 IBU. add that to 5 gallons. 8-9 IBU, which is detectable. Boiling more & trying to concentrate it won't help, the extra will just drop out. Hop extracts are made using high pressure CO2.

david_42 said:

Since the best you can do is 90-100 IBU, you won't get much increase. Say you boil up two quarts at 90 IBU. add that to 5 gallons. 8-9 IBU, which is detectable. Boiling more & trying to concentrate it won't help, the extra will just drop out. Hop extracts are made using high pressure CO2.

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Well doesn't that just suck. I guess I'll just suffer through it.

I'd try it. Boil an ounce of hops in about a gallon of water for an hour, you could do a late addition of 1lb of light DME and then let it ferment for a week. Rack to that keg. You could experiement with mixing by mixing your rye with other beers in the glass. Maybe mixing half IPA with half Rye is more balanced? Just pour like that. I do that with my (too sweet) Stout. About 1/3rd IPA in that stout comes off like an amber of sorts. Not great, but not as bad as the stout by itself either.

If it isn't TOO sweet, you can sometimes trick your palate into thinking the beer is more bitter than it is by (1) dry-hopping it with at LEAST an ounce of hops (two or more might be appropriate for an IPA), and (2) increasing the carbonation level. Both will mask/overcome the sweetness.

I had a couple of AG recipes where mash temp was too high and the beers were too sweet for me, and the combination of dry hopping and increased carbonation made them very drinkable!

I made a hop tea on several occasions of 1 oz of hops to 1 gal of water.

About 1/2 of the water boiled off.

It took 3 C of tea to get the bitterness where I liked it.

On the other hand you can double up on the hops and only boil 1/2 hour for the same bitterness.

Don't get me wrong, 8-9 IBU is noticeable and if you are willing to dilute it further, you could boost is 16-18 IBU. Bear in mind that diluting the batch will also dilute the ABV & sweetness, which will make the flavors more balanced. .

Dogfishhead has a creation called Randal the Enamel Animal, which is essentially a water-filter casing that they cram full of hops, and plug their beer line into it (and back out) before it hits the tap. It apparently only works well with the high ABV beers because it's the alcohol that strips the oils from the hop flowers..

Regardless, I feel like this could be an easy build. I was thinking hard about it and decided a mason jar with an in and out port in the lid (same set up as a keg would have - one long line, one short) cram packed with hops, might let you add hop (flavors, maybe, aromas, yes) on the fly.

Any weldless compression fitting, stainless steel in and out would work great I think. I have plans to build one down the road (I'm finishing the kegerator currently).

kvh

You want to be careful with the mason jar idea because it's not rated for pressure. The filter housings can handle the typical pressure in a keg so that's why they're used. You'll also need a way to coarsely filter out any leaf hops from getting through. Grain bag? I pretty much think tossing a hop bag into the keg is a poor man's compromise to building a randall and gets you 90% of the effect.

I was going to suggest the same thing KVH said. Mostly because I love to build gadgets, and an underhopped beer would be a great excuse to tinker.

I think the tea idea is a good one too...can't hurt.

Another option is using a water filter canister. You need a pipe down the middle, so the ale is forced down through the hops and back up to the outlet.

A guy at the LHBS I use built a setup like this and had it at the last tasting competition we had. Great beer from that puppy if you're a hophead.

The one advantage to a randall is you could split the beerline out of the keg and run one through the randall and one right to the faucet. Heck, you could even run it through two different hop varieties for fun. If you dry hop, you're committed to the higher hop aroma and the specific variety. In my beers, I dry hop and if you don't like it, there's the fridge with commerical brews..

You're right about running the tube down the center. A piece of acrylic tubing or even PVC would work, drill a few holes in it at the bottom to keep it from sealing tight against the bottom of the canister. I'd put the leaf hops in a hop bag or grain bag to keep it from clogging the beerline.

Bobby_M said:

You want to be careful with the mason jar idea because it's not rated for pressure. The filter housings can handle the typical pressure in a keg so that's why they're used. You'll also need a way to coarsely filter out any leaf hops from getting through. Grain bag? I pretty much think tossing a hop bag into the keg is a poor man's compromise to building a randall and gets you 90% of the effect.

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It wouldn't be really much pressure at all. Just the speed at which beer comes out of your tap. What it's really not rated for is positive pressure... It's meant to be a vacuum. But, regardless, use whatever you like. A thermos, a large glass bottle - heck, a soda bottle would work if you engineered it right. I think a small screen filter on the 'out' port would filter the hop bits just fine.

kvh

Sure it would be under the same pressure as your keg. You'd run a line from the beer out connector, into the randall, then from the randall to your faucet. The only time the randall is NOT under pressure is when your faucet is wide open. Of course, I'm assuming you're the type that does NOT purge down keg pressure to 2-3psi for dispensing. The practical way is to properly balance your lines to work well at carbonating pressures of 8-20psi.

I have had a genny cream ale pour through the randal set up, it tasted great I could not believe the differance. If any one comes up with a small set up, that will give you plenty of hop flavor. I have been thinking of working on something like this my self but my major set back is the funding.

killian said:

I have had a genny cream ale pour through the randal set up, it tasted great I could not believe the differance. If any one comes up with a small set up, that will give you plenty of hop flavor. I have been thinking of working on something like this my self but my major set back is the funding.

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Well, my idea before the mason jar/lid combo was to use one of those stainless canisters you keep coffee or pasta in. Clear plastic hinged lid, huge gasket, and nice fat rubber gasket...

Thinking about Bobby M's comment, yeah, I didn't consider that part of it... Any reason this wouldn't work though??

kvh

you can pick up the water filter housings on eBay for $10 each if you buy them in decent volume. Get 5 buddies to go in with you and get 2 each.

Boiling hops in water will not work. They require sugar to isomorize.