Whole Hops broke my stuff :(

I typically shop for ingredients on Saturday and brew on Sunday, so yesterday I'm at my LHBS and I'm super excited to see they have Citra hops, but only in whole cones. My recipe called for Cascade as the finishing hop but I decided to call an audible and substitute in the Citra (having recently drunk an all Citra IPA that was awesome). I've been brewing for 2 years and never used whole hops... Now I've read a lot of beer brewing books and literature that point out the differences of whole vs pellet but in all those sources I never read these two very important facts:

1) Whole Hops will clog up and (maybe) destroy your auto-siphon.
2) Whole Hops should NOT be put into a garbage disposal. (and my disposal will easily handle spent grain)

Yep, learn from my mistakes today. First off I siphon out of my brew kettle because it doesn't have a spigot. The siphon got clogged immediately and when I went to unclog it the little valve piece that makes the whole thing work broke off and I haven't been able to fix it yet. So I broke out the old strainer and removed the cones that way. Once they were removed I tossed them into the garbage disposal... mistake number 2. The disposal managed to grind them up into a thick pulp that clogged my drain pipes. Spent a half hour pulling hop goo out of the sink

I learned my lesson thanks, hop pellets only from now on... but maybe I'll give cones another chance at dry hopping one day.

 

Man did my second brew with 3 oz of whole Citra. I had no problems. It was a partial boil tho and I was able to pick up my kettle and dump it into a funnel with a screen.

 

Yeah, a partial boil would have been easier Damn near dumped the batch on my kitchen floor as I poured 6 gallons out of the kettle through the strainer. Does your funnel with screen get clogged easily? My funnel has a screen and I used it once but it clogged every 1/2 gallon I poured through it.

 

If i could go whole hops all the way i would, they make an excellent filter bed on top of my BKs false bottom. But i will admit before i had the FB the whole hops would clog my CFC :\

 

I was trying to think... Yeah the first batch I did which had one ounce pellet, I poured into the funnel and it did clog the screen. I had to keep moving my spoon over the screen. The second batch I used the whole leaf but I used a bucket as fermenter so I poured into a colander. That worked out a lot better. I am doing a full boil next batch so I am going to have to think this over but for this batch at least its going to be 1 ounce pellet again. Ill probably rack out the kettle.

 

There's nothing wrong with whole hops; just like with any ingredient you need to use them correctly. If you don't have a false bottom or screen, put them, loosely, in a strainer bag. Same with dry hopping.

 

I too just had my first experience with whole hops in the boil kettle. Have always used pellets but I have 1 lb of citra leaf and was making a citra wheat ale. I whirlpool and have my diptube pointed to the side but it still plugged it up. Said to heck with it and just dumped the kettle into the fermenter. Not too worried about having the hops and some break in there during fermentation.

 

Yep, lesson learned the hard way Need to get a hop bag for the kettle.

 

Funny enough, I just had this same problem last weekend. Brewed a modified Ed's Haus Pale Ale and used whole Cascade hops. Was cleaning out my auto-siphon and *CLINK*, the little plastic stopper popped out. The part itself didn't break - anybody have any luck figuring out how to put this thing back in?

 

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/so-i-probably-need-replace-my-auto-siphon-then-eh-250127/

 

Thanks for the link, I was able to repair the siphon using a AA battery and tweezers

 

Nah dont give up on whole hops just call it a lesson learned and Put them in a mulch pile from now on!

 

I use almost all whole leaf, I use a siphontap with an aerator attachment on the other end of the hose. Works much better coming out of the kettle and does a fair job of aeration during the transfer. It will still clog up occasionally if there's a ton of hops in there, but you can just swirl it a little and it usually frees it up some. If you want to stick with the autosipon, I usually put a grain bag over mine coming out of secondary with a whole leaf dry hop. The bigger surface area of the siphontap seems to help a lot.

 

yeah totally use a muslin bag or tie them up in a bit of cheese cloth. treat them like a tea bag floating around in you boil.