I've been reading about the benefits of recirculating beer while dry hopping for a while and wanted to try it out myself. The main benefits are faster extraction and more oil extracted - in other words a better dry hop.
Well, I finally tested my prototype a couple days ago so I figured why not post something. So without further ado, here's version 1.0 of my dry hop recirculator:
How it works: first liquid comes out of the ball lock post and into the tan pump. The pump pushes the liquid through the hop rocket, which contains a hops sock with some hop pellets inside. Liquid leaves the hop rocket and returns to the keg through the gas in post. Pretty simple.
I connected the pump to a pwm to slow it down since I wanted this device to gently filter the beer through the hops. Also, since I want to sometimes use this with already carbonated beer, I wanted the pump to disturb the co2 as little as possible to not cause foaming.
To test it, I had a little leftover failed beer that could be used (I added some water because I didn't quite have enough). This beer was already fully carbonated, so seemed like a good test. The basic procedure was this.
1) Sanitize recirculator
2) Put pellet hops in hop bag, placed inside hop rocket
3) Purge recirculator with C02
4) Attach liquid ball lock, making sure keg has higher pressure, which forces liquid into hop rocket
5) Connect gas line and immediately turn on pump (turning down pwm)
6) Once finished, use C02 to push remaining beer out of hop rocket and back into keg
Not sure why I expected problems, but it worked like a charm. Since it was only a test, I only added .5 oz of hops, but after 2 hours of recirculating I could clearly smell it in the beer. No foaming issues, no leaks, no problems at all. I had actually added a second finer filter inside the hop rocket, but this turned out to be completely unnecessary as the hops stayed completely enclosed in the hop sock.
So what's the next step? Dry hop some beers this weekend with a ton of hops
Well, I finally tested my prototype a couple days ago so I figured why not post something. So without further ado, here's version 1.0 of my dry hop recirculator:
How it works: first liquid comes out of the ball lock post and into the tan pump. The pump pushes the liquid through the hop rocket, which contains a hops sock with some hop pellets inside. Liquid leaves the hop rocket and returns to the keg through the gas in post. Pretty simple.
I connected the pump to a pwm to slow it down since I wanted this device to gently filter the beer through the hops. Also, since I want to sometimes use this with already carbonated beer, I wanted the pump to disturb the co2 as little as possible to not cause foaming.
To test it, I had a little leftover failed beer that could be used (I added some water because I didn't quite have enough). This beer was already fully carbonated, so seemed like a good test. The basic procedure was this.
1) Sanitize recirculator
2) Put pellet hops in hop bag, placed inside hop rocket
3) Purge recirculator with C02
4) Attach liquid ball lock, making sure keg has higher pressure, which forces liquid into hop rocket
5) Connect gas line and immediately turn on pump (turning down pwm)
6) Once finished, use C02 to push remaining beer out of hop rocket and back into keg
Not sure why I expected problems, but it worked like a charm. Since it was only a test, I only added .5 oz of hops, but after 2 hours of recirculating I could clearly smell it in the beer. No foaming issues, no leaks, no problems at all. I had actually added a second finer filter inside the hop rocket, but this turned out to be completely unnecessary as the hops stayed completely enclosed in the hop sock.
So what's the next step? Dry hop some beers this weekend with a ton of hops
