"Bottle Hopping" --- Anyone?

[GHBWNY]

Just curious about the effect on taste/aroma/carbing/conditioning, etc. of dropping a hop pellet into a bottle just before capping. Obviously, it will add some residue to deal with. But I wondered if anyone has tried it.

I bottled an APA a couple weeks ago and dropped a pellet of Perle in one bottle. I'll be doing a side-by-side comparison in a week or so.

 

[cjgenever]

Tried it with pellets... bad idea unless you like chewing your beer :-D

Expect some vegetal flavors.

 

[Yooper]

I love hops, but not pieces of floaties in my beer. Gross, really.

 

[webersa4]

http://osobrewing.com/lupulin-maximus-imperial-ipa/

This is a nice IIPA from O'so Brewing in Wisconsin. Not too many floaties but it was a whole cone in the bottle.

 

[kcmobrewer]

That is awesome. I want to do that now.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Manzier]

I don't think you actually want any hop particles in you're finished product or it will taste astringent and awful.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[ross_daly]

I recently bottle hopped a six pack of corona with different hops in order to test out their effect. http://because-beer.com/exbeeriment2-dry-hopping-corona-in-the-bottle/
I was surprised how vegetal some of them ended up tasting.

 

[Kealia]

I think you would all find this to be an interesting read.

 

[GHBWNY]

I think you would all find this to be an interesting read.

Very cool. Interesting in the pics of all 12 poured beers, there was no perceivable evidence of hop residue... must be crashing allowed pouring most of the bottle without floatie issues.

I'm going to crack open my CC'd APA with the bottle-hopped Perle tonight.

 

[GHBWNY]

Well, I'm drinking it as I speak. Wow! The one pellet of Perle added noticable bitterness right at the start that wasn't there with the Cascade alone. It also enhances, it seems, the grapefruity quality of the Cascade in both taste and aroma. I cold-crashed this one bottle for a couple days and everything settled out. I poured it into a glass with all but one little "escapee" from the hop residue. I wish someone made a beer bottle with the same concave bottom like a wine bottle, 'cause I'll be doing this again with other brews/hops.

 

[kmckiou]

I've done it. It worked really well. I filled a few bottles from a keg of APA and dropped in each bottle 1/10th ounce of leaf Cascade. After 24 hours in the fridge I opened one. I poured carefully and the hops formed a plug in the neck of the bottle through which the beer filtered - like a Randalizer. Brilliant hop flavor and I don't think I got any hops in my glass. Even if I had, it would have been no big deal.

 

[wingedcoyote]

I've done this with pellets, much like some others I put different hops in each bottle of a six pack. It worked much better than I expected, after a day on the table and then a few days in the fridge the pellet bits settled right down to the bottom and stuck, with a careful "homebrew pour" I got no floaties in the glasses at all. Try it!

 

[GHBWNY]

I've done this with pellets, much like some others I put different hops in each bottle of a six pack. It worked much better than I expected, after a day on the table and then a few days in the fridge the pellet bits settled right down to the bottom and stuck, with a careful "homebrew pour" I got no floaties in the glasses at all. Try it!

Am I wrong in thinking this is might be a fairly good way to familiarize myself with different hop flavors/aromas without having to brew an entire batch? And if I try this with a brand of beer with a screw-off cap, will screwing the cap back on after adding hops seal it well enough for several months of storage? Or should I re-cap with standard crowns?

 

[Bamsdealer]

Worked really well the few I tried with whole cones from my plants. No vegetal flavors that I noticed.

 

[dlaramie08]

Using a whole cone or two would also add that bling factor for appearance unless covered with yeast.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[JDFlow]

Using a whole cone or two would also add that bling factor for appearance unless covered with yeast.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

+1 "bling factor"

 

[GHBWNY]

Worked really well the few I tried with whole cones from my plants. No vegetal flavors that I noticed.

From what I'm gathering here, the added hops should be allowed to sit at room temp for a day or so, and then cold-crashed? Will cold crashing slow or stop infusing of flavor into beer? IOW, if bottle is hopped, can it be stored for extended periods of time without it turning the beer skunky?

 

[CorporateHippie]

In the case of O'so Brewing Lupulin Maximus......they quickly began taking on a very different flavor after a few months. So much so that the taphouse started giving 4-packs of it away with another purchase. They claimed it was taking on a barley wine characteristic. I have had fresh ones and "free ones" and they did taste a lot different. Now I am not sure if this is due to the hop cone floating in the bottle or not but flavor absolutely changed. I have put Cascade Leaf Hops in bottles of my Cascade Pail Ale before but I drink them right around the 6 week mark. I havn't tried to "age" one yet.

 

[Bamsdealer]

From what I'm gathering here, the added hops should be allowed to sit at room temp for a day or so, and then cold-crashed? Will cold crashing slow or stop infusing of flavor into beer? IOW, if bottle is hopped, can it be stored for extended periods of time without it turning the beer skunky?

I keg hop all the time. That involves putting a couple ounces of hops in the keg, chilling and setting the keg to carbonate. Very effective method of dry hopping, but it takes a good 2 to 3 weeks to get the full effect. It's around this time that the beer comes together and carbonates.

With dry hopping in the bottle, I try to get a similar effect by adding 2 or 3 cones to the bottles when filling. Let the beer carbonate fully for a few weeks. At that point, try chilling them all if you have the room and drinking. They shouldn't change much when chilled. If you leave them at room temp for several months and chill before drinking each one, you may notice the beer changes more over time.

 

[GHBWNY]

The last time I bottle-hopped a beer, it was more or less experimental and I did it right at bottling time. It was noticeably better/different than the non-hopped bottles, plus there was little to no residue to contend with.

I'm just tasting my first attempt at a homegrown recipe which was bottled 4 weeks ago (3 weeks cond. @ room temp, 1 week in fridge) and while flavor is good, there is not quite as much head or hop aroma as I'd like. So, my question is, would it do any good at this point to bottle-hop a few like I did before? Or is it pretty much too late to have any noticeable effect?

 

[Ninoid]

Inspired by this forum post, I opened five naturally carbonated bottles of my Blond Ale and added two grams of Mandarina Bawaria hop pellets to each. I left them at room temperature for three days and then in the refrigerator for another five days. The hops settled well to the bottom of the bottle so it was no problem pouring it into a glass, but I had to be careful to leave at least two centimeters of beer in the bottle (once a little bit got into my glass and clouded the entire glass and the beer took on a greenish hue). The hop aroma is quite intense, so much so that it can be felt from a meter away from the glass. The taste is so grassy that it covers all the other aromas and flavors of the beer. I'm not a big fan of very hoppy beer styles so I probably won't do this again, but I think it's not a bad hopping technique at all. Maybe the beer would be less grassy if the hops were added to the bottle right after bottling so that they stay in the bottle longer.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

The idea was apparently on a Brewers Network podcast in 2013 (link, internet archives link) and looks like a technique that some professional brewers used at the time.

eta: for those looking for the Brewing Network podcast, this may be it:

and it may be here https://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/post2088/

 

[fluketamer]

i have tried this a couple different ways. including adding hops in small muslin bags in 4 liter purged oxebar PET kegs. i got better results from making hop teas and adding them instead of hops. i have also tried the new hop terpenes which are sort of meant for this. (non bittering flavor and aromatic hop addition on the cold side)

so far i havent had as good results as traditional flame out/ whirpool or dry hopping to get flavor and aroma into my beer.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

It's a technique from the the early 2010s that provides a "quick and dirty" way to experience the different flavors that hops can provide. I did it once or twice when I was new to the hobby and it was a cost / time effective.

As @fluketamer mentions, there are more accurate techniques (but require some additional time / effort) and newer hop products that provide better (and less grassy) flavors. Also, flavor wheels are everywhere in the mid 2020s but IIRC were much harder to find in the early 2010s.

 

[Ninoid]

I read about how to improve commercial beer (Bud Light) by adding hops to bottles and that this technique is primarily intended for that. I tried classic dry hopping in a fermenter several times, but the hop aroma would be lost very quickly, after less than a month after bottling. Dry hopping in bottles has a much stronger effect with a much smaller amount of hops, but the taste is too grassy and care must be taken when pouring into the glass.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

The taste is so grassy that it covers all the other aromas and flavors of the beer.

I tried it once (adding hop pellets to bottles of Corona) and I also felt that the grassy character overpowered any pleasant hop flavors and aroma.

i got better results from making hop teas and adding them instead of hops.

Years ago I played around with making some hop teas and mixing them with "beer". I went with the resealable PET bottles of Steel Reserve malt liquor. The theory was that at 20% hop tea, it would still be ~5% ABV. It actually worked very well. The downside is that it is a bit of time and effort to make a fairly large amount of crappy beer. Good for taking to share with 20 people at a homebrew club, but not great for 1-2 people to drink.

I gave up on this mostly because making a 1 gallon batch of extract single hop beer is rather easy, and yields an enjoyable beer with real hop character. The downside is that it takes ~4 weeks to ferment and bottle condition (though Lutra and a small keg speeds that up).