- Joined
- Feb 16, 2012
- Messages
- 3,355
- Reaction score
- 4,220
- Location
- Either in the brewery or on the road
Last spring and summer I got all manic and went into hyper-drive brewing a bunch of beers for a regional competition, sanctioned by the BJCP and judged by certified judges as well as brewmasters from several local brewpubs and one very famous and prominent national brewery headquartered locally. This wasn't my first rodeo. I've entered this particular competition several times before, as well as other regional ones in addition to the Sam Adams Longshot competition in years past. But this time instead of entering one or two beers, I submitted ten different entries ranging from continental lagers to domestic light beers to IPA and Pale ales and even a 8.7% strong ale. Nine out of 10 placed with 2 firsts, 4 seconds, and 3 third place finishers. That was the good news.
The bad news was the less than encouraging scores and comments I got on some of the grade sheets. I spent quite a bit of time studying the sheets and taking the constructive criticisms to heart, spending the last 6 months rethinking many of the processes and procedures I've used for more than two decades of brewing. I determined that I'd become complacent (lazy) with regards to sanitation. I had gotten sloppy with pitching rates of yeast ("Yeah, 800ml of 4-month old slurry will do just fine, even though Mr. Malty says 2.5 liters of fresh..."). You get the idea.
I had obsessed on some things like water chemistry, step mash temperatures, grain crush and ferment temperatures while letting other things just slide. I used a lot of grains that were as much as 2 years old (they'd been stored uncrushed in plastic bags in heavy storage bins; they'll be O.K., right?). Hops, with the exception of some various new cryo hops, had been bought in bulk and were at least as old as the grains. (Sure, they'd been kept in the freezer in vacuum sealed, nitrogen flushed, foil packets, and the AA% had been adjusted for age. But they just weren't Fresh).
And neither were some of the beers I was entering. Some were approaching 4-5 months since initial fermentation. My IPA and Pale especially needed a 'refresh'. I had read about hop tea as an antioxidant health drink and wondered if it might give a few aging beers a little extra kick. A google search led me to an article on brewing with hop tea as well, so I gave it a shot using 170F water in a French press with 1 ounce each Citra and Centennial steeped for 20 minutes. Before bottling my entries, I dosed each bottle with 3 ml of the tea. The results were nothing short of spectacular. I was so blown away that I dosed the rest of the keg with a proportional amount of the tea, continuing to enjoy this 'refreshed' beer for another 3 months till the keg finally kicked. The refreshed beers ended up among the highest place finishers in the competition, even though I had considered not even entering them.
So what has all this got to do with my question about dry hopping and my particular situation? Well, as I said earlier, many of the scores and comments from the competition resulted in a top-to-bottom review of my processes and procedures. Hot side showed few flaws, except for old ingredients. That meant the pain ($$$) of throwing out unused but out-of-date grains and hops.
Cold side was decidedly more costly. I got rid of old equipment like spoons and airlocks and bungs and siphons and hydrometers, etc., and replaced them with new ones. I used to do primary in plastic, siphon to secondary in glass, siphon to kegs and force carb. Now I've replaced the old plastic with stainless steel conical fermenters. No more secondary ferments: 2-3 weeks in steel with a trub dump after 2 days and a yeast harvest when it looks like I'm at within about 5 points of F.G. (~2 weeks on a three week ferment). At final gravity, LoDO closed transfer under pressure to a sanitized and CO2 purged keg. Crash chill to 38-40F, force carb at 12 psi and condition for two weeks before tapping.
And dry hopping? No way. I transfer a hop tea proportional to the dry hopping schedule into the conditioning keg just prior to the LoDO transfer from the conical, resulting in the freshest hop flavor and aromatics with none of the vegetal properties. It even allows for the bio-transformative processes to occur between the hop oils and active yeast. I'm also considering experimenting with hop teas to replace steep/whirlpool additions since isomerization of hop oils (or NON-isomerization hop oils) can be more easily controlled with time and temperature in the steeping of hop teas without adding vegetal flavors to the wort. That said, I'm a real fan of FWH, minimal-to-no early and mid boil additions, but with massive hop-bursting additions within 5 minutes of flameout.
So I'm curious what y'all think. Does it sound right? Does anyone have more experience than my brief encounter with a similar process? I've spent the last ½ year studying, planning and thinking this thing through, but have yet to taste the final fruits of my labors (Santa just came through with the conicals, so the initial run is not completed, but so far it's lookin' good).
If this works out the next experimental process will be to "primary" in the conical until within 5 points of F.G., then LoDO transfer to a keg dosed with speise at high krausen and let it carb up naturally under a 15 psi spunding valve for a couple of weeks, then transfer to a serving keg. Yummm! Can't wait.
Brooo Brother
The bad news was the less than encouraging scores and comments I got on some of the grade sheets. I spent quite a bit of time studying the sheets and taking the constructive criticisms to heart, spending the last 6 months rethinking many of the processes and procedures I've used for more than two decades of brewing. I determined that I'd become complacent (lazy) with regards to sanitation. I had gotten sloppy with pitching rates of yeast ("Yeah, 800ml of 4-month old slurry will do just fine, even though Mr. Malty says 2.5 liters of fresh..."). You get the idea.
I had obsessed on some things like water chemistry, step mash temperatures, grain crush and ferment temperatures while letting other things just slide. I used a lot of grains that were as much as 2 years old (they'd been stored uncrushed in plastic bags in heavy storage bins; they'll be O.K., right?). Hops, with the exception of some various new cryo hops, had been bought in bulk and were at least as old as the grains. (Sure, they'd been kept in the freezer in vacuum sealed, nitrogen flushed, foil packets, and the AA% had been adjusted for age. But they just weren't Fresh).
And neither were some of the beers I was entering. Some were approaching 4-5 months since initial fermentation. My IPA and Pale especially needed a 'refresh'. I had read about hop tea as an antioxidant health drink and wondered if it might give a few aging beers a little extra kick. A google search led me to an article on brewing with hop tea as well, so I gave it a shot using 170F water in a French press with 1 ounce each Citra and Centennial steeped for 20 minutes. Before bottling my entries, I dosed each bottle with 3 ml of the tea. The results were nothing short of spectacular. I was so blown away that I dosed the rest of the keg with a proportional amount of the tea, continuing to enjoy this 'refreshed' beer for another 3 months till the keg finally kicked. The refreshed beers ended up among the highest place finishers in the competition, even though I had considered not even entering them.
So what has all this got to do with my question about dry hopping and my particular situation? Well, as I said earlier, many of the scores and comments from the competition resulted in a top-to-bottom review of my processes and procedures. Hot side showed few flaws, except for old ingredients. That meant the pain ($$$) of throwing out unused but out-of-date grains and hops.
Cold side was decidedly more costly. I got rid of old equipment like spoons and airlocks and bungs and siphons and hydrometers, etc., and replaced them with new ones. I used to do primary in plastic, siphon to secondary in glass, siphon to kegs and force carb. Now I've replaced the old plastic with stainless steel conical fermenters. No more secondary ferments: 2-3 weeks in steel with a trub dump after 2 days and a yeast harvest when it looks like I'm at within about 5 points of F.G. (~2 weeks on a three week ferment). At final gravity, LoDO closed transfer under pressure to a sanitized and CO2 purged keg. Crash chill to 38-40F, force carb at 12 psi and condition for two weeks before tapping.
And dry hopping? No way. I transfer a hop tea proportional to the dry hopping schedule into the conditioning keg just prior to the LoDO transfer from the conical, resulting in the freshest hop flavor and aromatics with none of the vegetal properties. It even allows for the bio-transformative processes to occur between the hop oils and active yeast. I'm also considering experimenting with hop teas to replace steep/whirlpool additions since isomerization of hop oils (or NON-isomerization hop oils) can be more easily controlled with time and temperature in the steeping of hop teas without adding vegetal flavors to the wort. That said, I'm a real fan of FWH, minimal-to-no early and mid boil additions, but with massive hop-bursting additions within 5 minutes of flameout.
So I'm curious what y'all think. Does it sound right? Does anyone have more experience than my brief encounter with a similar process? I've spent the last ½ year studying, planning and thinking this thing through, but have yet to taste the final fruits of my labors (Santa just came through with the conicals, so the initial run is not completed, but so far it's lookin' good).
If this works out the next experimental process will be to "primary" in the conical until within 5 points of F.G., then LoDO transfer to a keg dosed with speise at high krausen and let it carb up naturally under a 15 psi spunding valve for a couple of weeks, then transfer to a serving keg. Yummm! Can't wait.
Brooo Brother
