Option with bland blonde ale.

[mrdauber64]

Hi,

I brewed and kegged a blonde ale for an event on Friday that is bland. It's sitting in my Kegerator now and has been there about a week fully carbed. I'm wondering if I can get some hop aroma/flavor before Friday.

Has anybody had any success with hop teas added directly to the keg? if so what should I use for the hop to water ratio.

Would dryhopping work if I remove the keg from the kegerator, add the hops in a paint strainer bag, and add them directly to the keg. I'm thinking I could get 2 days of dry hopping before I need to chill it back down. Would this mess with my carbonation at all? Would this be long enough?

I'm going for an American blonde so I don't want anything over the top. I'm thinking of using Cascade hops. It's for a group of people who range from craft beer drinkers to BMC drinkers.

Thank you!

 

[day_trippr]

You can certainly keg hop your Cascade in a sanitized bag - and just leave them in the keg 'til it kicks. Given all the nucleation points you'll likely lose some carbonation up front but if you put the keg back on CO2 you can get it back up again before you start dispensing.

fwiw, I've only used hop tea once - for an insipid wheat beer that I had seriously under-hopped and needed some IBUs, stat! I boiled TF out of some high alpha hops in a couple of cups of water then poured that in. Worked great and saved the beer, but enhancing aroma/flavor wasn't the goal and frankly the tea contributed pretty much none of either.

So I'm not sure how well that would work if you were trying to jack up the character without changing the bitterness. Clearly you wouldn't boil the hops as long/hard - in fact perhaps bringing the water/hops up to ~170°F and letting it sit there for 20 minutes might be the better way to go in that case...

Cheers!

 

[brew703]

I have kegged hopped using a sanitized bag and it did help but kinda made the beer a little cloudy. Not really a big deal.
Also, fruit goes good with blondes. My wife likes ruby red grape fruit squeezed in her glass. Lemon or limes would work as well. Those will help w/flavor obviously but not aroma.
Try both ways. Would hurt.

 

[bobeer]

I wouldn't use a hop tea as that's usually used to add bitterness that is missing in finished beer. I'd dry hop in the keg with a muslin bag and you can even put fruit zest in there too if you'd like. Orange zest goes will centennial, cascade, amarillo, etc... You can do this under either carb'ing pressure or serving pressure and it can be cold in the fridge as well. I dry hop all my beers this way and have never had any issues.

 

[mrdauber64]

Thank you everyone! I ended up doing a hop tea with 12 ounces of water and a half ounce of hops at starting at 160 degrees and keeping it in there for 20 minutes. I dumped it in the keg and it did add some hop character but not what I was looking for. I then dry hopped in the keg with another half ounce of hops and that seemed to do the trick when I tried it the next day. It definitely had more hop flavor and smell which made the blonde more interesting. I'll have to try the orange zest the next time.