Dry hop disaster?

[Evan Kingsbury]

Hi all- I brewed a New England style IPA today. I'm trying out a new pressure fermenter for the first time. I'm going to double-dry hop the beer and wanted to avoid introducing oxygen so I used magnets to hold my dry hop additions in hop bags above the level of the fermenting wort. I've attached a photo so you can see what I'm talking about. (I also wanted to avoid the "hop volcano" that I've heard can happen when dry hopping beers under pressure.)

This fermenter has a very narrow mouth so getting these hops bags stuck into place was a real pain in the butt. While handling it, one of the two hop bags dipped down a hit the wort for ~1 second. I believe that only one edge of the bag touched the wort, and it was very quick.

So my question is: should I go on with fermentation as if it didn't happen? Or fish that bag out and throw away 4.5oz of hops? My thought process is that since some of the hops did come in contact with beer that they may get moldy over the next week before I drop them into the beer. If that happens, I won't have any way of knowing. At least not until I start drinking the beer.

If it matters, my fermentation temp is going to be ~63F for the first 24 to 36 hours. (I'm using US-04 English ale yeast.) I'm starting without pressure and letting it build naturally with my spunding value set at 8 psi. I plan to drop my first dry hop addition when I'm about 5 points from my FG. Probably 24 or 48 hours after fermentation stops, I'll chill to about 55F and drop my second dry hop addition. 2 days later, I'll do a closed transfer to my keg.

 

[hotbeer]

I don't pressure ferment and I haven't dry hopped at all this last year. So till some others finish whatever it is they are doing today and give a more informed answer. I'll just say that I would leave it alone and wouldn't worry about it one bit.

Just continue as if everything is going as planned.

Assuming you haven't already opened it back up and fiddled with stuff.

Weekends tend to be slow around here during the day.

 

[Jim R]

I would definitely just let it go. It should be fine.

It took me a couple tries to figure out the magnet technique that works well for me. I first boil and then sanitize my hop bags and then fill them with my dry hops along with 2 bigger Sous Vide magnets inside the bag (one on each end of the bag) and 2 magnets on the outside of the fermenter. Then I tie off the open end of the hop bag so that there is no extra room in the bag. This eliminates any sagging of the bag. This is the most important step since the sagging was causing me problems like you were having. Then when it is time to dry hop, I very carefully slide down the 2 magnets until it is into the beer. I can also then lift the bag back up out of the beer when needed. Using 4 total magnets also gives me a little insurance in case one set of magnets become disconnected from each other.

If you saw a picture of my hop bags after I close up the fermenter, my bags would be about 1/4th of your size and right below the top cover at the very top of the fermenter. You don't need all of that extra space in the hop bags sagging down.

 

[Evan Kingsbury]

@hotbeer and @Jim R - thanks for your response. Like you've suggested I'm just going with it. If things end up going side ways, I'll update this post so that otherwise will know.

 

[camonick]

Just out of curiosity, what is your recipe? Maybe it’s the lighting, but that’s really dark wort for a neipa. The neipa I brewed at the end of November looked like this.

 

[IslandLizard]

@Evan Kingsbury Nice picture!

It will be fine!
One got a little dip, that's not going to harm anything. You won't get mold as mold needs oxygen, and there won't be any left once fermentation starts, cranking out tons of CO2. Besides, hops have strong preservative/antiseptic capabilities.

One small detail in terminology...
It's wort until you add yeast. It then instantly becomes... beer!
IOW, we're fermenting beer (not wort).

 

[wepeeler]

Shouldn't get any mold if your sanitation was on point. Plus, once fermentation starts, you'll have an oxygen free environment, like @IslandLizard said. Wort looks a bit dark though. Extract?

 

[Evan Kingsbury]

@camonick and @wepeeler - I agree it is darker than I'd like. I use an Anvil Foundry 6.5 which has a max grain weight of 8 lbs. So I add some extract to the boil in order to brew bigger beers. In this case it was 1.5 lbs of DME.

If I convert the light DME to base malt, the grain bill for this beer would be: 62% pale ale malt, 22% flaked oats, 11% malted oats, 2.5% carapils, 2.5% acid malt. The recipe is loosely based on John Palmer's Oat Cream IPA. The dark color may be a result of my 90-minute boil. I was planning on 60-minutes but ya know, things didn't go to plan.

@camonick - mind sharing the recipe for the beer you brewed in November? That's a good looking NEIPA!

 

[camonick]

@camonick - mind sharing the recipe for the beer you brewed in November? That's a good looking NEIPA!

It’s actually one of @wepeeler ’s recipes, so I’ll defer to him to make that decision.