How to Clear Suspended hops in your Fermentor

[Gustatorian]

I have a 7 gallon conical that I threw 3 oz. of pellet hops into about 5 days ago. When I check from the sample port, my hops are visibly still suspended in the beer. Is this due to the activity of the yeast or do pellets just take this long to settle at the bottom? Would cold-crashing the beer to 50 degrees for a couple hours help with the settling?

 

[tooldudetool]

Yes cold crashing would definitely help. After its cold you should add gelatin (half a pack stirred in cold water, microwaved in 15 second bursts until it gets to 150-160 degrees, dump into cold beer) if you really want clear beer. Gelatin is amazing!

 

[unviewtiful]

If you can drop the temp of the beer to near freezing (32-36 F) for 24 hours all the hop particulate should settle out nicely. I'm sure it would eventually clear at 50 F, but it would take a quite a bit longer.

 

[Natdavis777]

+1 for getting the fermentor down to the 30s. When my dryhop is complete, I set the controller to 33F and leave it there until I am ready to keg (usually sits at that temp for a few days) and the hops compact nicely on the bottom of the carboys.

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, historically I've been aware that my dry hop charge would be sitting on the bottom of the fermentor by the time the beer temperature hit 50°F on the way down to ~34°F. But I had a suspicion that state had actually been reached earlier, I just had never caught it above 50.

This week I was crashing two batches that were dry hopped with 2 and 3 ounces of pellets, respectively, and I happened to check the chamber when the beer temp was 55°F (coming down from 68°F). And all of the pellet mush was sitting on the bottom already.

So it doesn't take much of a "crash" to sink any hop bits that haven't sunk on their own...

Cheers!

 

[Shawn_Brewin]

Are you Kegging or Bottling??? if you are Kegging then +1 for Cold Crashing with Gelatin. Helps if you give it a few days with some gelatin, also helps drop out residue from chill haze. If time isn't on your side though, i have always just put a sanitized hop sack on the outlet of my Syphon. will not clear the beer but will catch 99% of the hop particles/debris, then cold crashing can happen while you are carbing your keg.
But if you are bottling you should probably refrain from cold crashing or using Gelatin. in my experience it just drops too much yeast ou of suspension and messes with carbing your bottles.