Remove hops after boil or no?

Up until now I've just left all the (fresh, whole) hops in during primary fermentation and crossed my fingers and hoped to filter out as much as possible while racking to a secondary fermenter.

While the beer has turned out pretty good, I'm wondering if I shouldn't be filtering out the hops before pitching the yeast.

yes, you should. Most of us will use a nylon bag/hop bag to make it easier to remove.

Most people rack their beer off as much of the settlement as they can when going to the fermenter. The hops are adding to the beer sitting the fermenter. Whether or not the recipe would benefit from that is up to the recipe.

there is no need to filter hops. if your worried about hops in your secondary use a hops bag when brewing or put the hops bags over both ends of your siphon. you could also try whirl-pooling your wart before siphoning it out of the brew pot. this collects the hops and break material in the middle of the pot. then you just siphon from the outside edge of the pot.

Hey A4J,

ok so when you add your hops, you are tieing them up in a nylon bag, boiling them in the wort, then just removing the bag at the end? Sounds simple enough.

And Irregular Pulse, that's what I'm worried about, the hops contributing unintended flavors while sitting in the fermenter.

crypt0 said:

And Irregular Pulse, that's what I'm worried about, the hops contributing unintended flavors while sitting in the fermenter.

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like what? any flavor or aroma particles have already ben added to the wart during the boil. any hops bits that are left after the boil are most likely totally spent and will settle to the bottom at the end of primary fermentation.

You can always get one of those 5 gal. paint filter bags, that seem to keep hopping into my lunch box at work and pour your wort through one of them. It takes out hops and break material. They work well in ale pails.

TipsyDragon said:

like what? any flavor or aroma particles have already ben added to the wart during the boil. any hops bits that are left after the boil are most likely totally spent and will settle to the bottom at the end of primary fermentation.

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They don't settle to the bottom. They get plastered on the headspace area of the fermenter by the krausen foam. Don't ask me how I know

LibertyBrewer said:

You can always get one of those 5 gal. paint filter bags, that seem to keep hopping into my lunch box at work and pour your wort through one of them. It takes out hops and break material. They work well in ale pails.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but anything that contacts the wort after it has cooled needs to be sanitized.

actually the stuff plastered to the inside of the carboy is hop resin, maybe some of the lighter solid bits. but the heavier bits have to fall to the bottom and get burred in the trub.

I rarely strain my wort. If I have a ton of sludge at the bottom of my pot, I might not pour it all in, but I generally just pour it all in. Sometimes, if I use a ton of leaf hops, I strain since that's easy enough to do by pouring through a sanitized strainer. Otherwise, I don't sweat it.

The hops debris left in the fermenter just settles to the bottom with the trub after primary, and I rack from above the trub when I go to bottle or keg the beer. No harm will come to the beer by hops debris remaining in the fermenter during primary.

I just had this same conversation with a guy I met today at a HBS in Trenton. His take on it was that leaving the hops in may actually detract from aroma hops additions. He was describing how commercial brewers dunk paint filter bags full of hops in the wort during the last few minutes of the boil - kind of steeping it like a tea bag - and then removing the bag to get the most hop aroma from the addition. His point was that if you leave the aroma hops in too long, even after you kill the heat, the addition contributes less aroma. In other words, less is more. (Sorry for rambling - too much homebrew tonight...) The upshot was he recommended using a muslin bag for hops additions, and removing the bags at the end of the boil and squeezing them to extract as much hop oil as possible. There will still be enough hop particles in the wort to assist with settling the cold break material, but not too much. Does anyone here use this method and find it is better than leaving the hops in with the cold break? I have been tossing in everything into my fermenter, cold break, hops and all.

The only negative thing I've noticed in my limited brewing experience is that, if you leave them in, it creates more material to clog up your airlock on a rather vigorous fermentation.

That point is moot if you use a blow off hose. I've never noticed any flavor differences.

Not that I have a ton of brewing experience under my belt, but I've done beers were I've filtered out the hop sludge before going into the primary and others were I haven't. Never noticed a difference.

+1 tipsydragon
+1 Yooper


I have read much literature that explains benefits of leaving hops in.

cheezydemon3 said:

+1 tipsydragon
+1 Yooper


I have read much literature that explains benefits of leaving hops in.

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Heard it was/gave some kind of yeast nutrient effect.

YooperBrew said:

I rarely strain my wort. If I have a ton of sludge at the bottom of my pot, I might not pour it all in, but I generally just pour it all in. Sometimes, if I use a ton of leaf hops, I strain since that's easy enough to do by pouring through a sanitized strainer. Otherwise, I don't sweat it.

The hops debris left in the fermenter just settles to the bottom with the trub after primary, and I rack from above the trub when I go to bottle or keg the beer. No harm will come to the beer by hops debris remaining in the fermenter during primary.

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I read some saying the primary benefit of Bud's beechwood aging was that it gave the yeast more surface area to cling to and sped up the process more than the wood having any flavor impacts. I have NO idea if this is true, but if so, then then the hops will offer a benefit until/when they compact.

I use the muslin bags tied back to a clothes pin on the rim of the BK, at flame out, hops out.