Dry Hopping in a conical

[permo]

Going to do a dry hop on a 15 gallon batch in my conical fermenter. Do I go ahead and just toss the pellets in and let them sink and drop them out of the cone later or should I suspend them in some sort of weighted bag?

My concern is that the pellet hops will drop out and sink before they can totally give all the aroma to the beer.

 

[Stillraining]

Id bag them myself..no need to weight the bag either.

 

[pvpeacock]

I just toss mine in loose and let them sink. Seems to work fine. I tried bagging them twice and the bag ended up blocking the dip tube when I went to rack the beer.

 

[mbbransc]

I toss mine in loose. Also do it in stages. Sometimes recirculate with purged chugger and hose too.

 

[sandyeggoxj]

I toss them in in stages. Just let em drop. I'll shake the whole thing sometimes. It's only 18 gallons so it's pretty easy to pickup and shake.

 

[Stillraining]

FWIW.. I make small fishing line choakers to go around the top of the hop bags with a corkie on one end ( corkie hangs outside fermentor )...Easy to close any lid on the line with no issue of leaks and the bag stays off bottom and cant clog anything. Way less hop matter in my yeast at harvest time. And easy to collect clean used Dry hops for future use bittering on another batch. just empty in a zip-lock bag and freeze.

Brewlosopher did a exbeereriment direct pitching hops vs using hop bags...He found basically no difference. So either way is fine.

 

[shorestyle]

If you aren't dumping your yeast before dry hopping, I'd recommend doing that first of all. I'm a pro brewer and what we do at the brewery is crash the beer, dump the yeast, add the hops, recirculate for 8 hours then dump as much of the hops as possible. Had great results this way and it drastically cuts down your dry hop time. Would only work if you have a pump of course. A few brewer friends of mine have had great results just dumping in the hops after crashing and dumping yeast too though.

 

[KimJohansen]

If you aren't dumping your yeast before dry hopping, I'd recommend doing that first of all. I'm a pro brewer and what we do at the brewery is crash the beer, dump the yeast, add the hops, recirculate for 8 hours then dump as much of the hops as possible. Had great results this way and it drastically cuts down your dry hop time. Would only work if you have a pump of course. A few brewer friends of mine have had great results just dumping in the hops after crashing and dumping yeast too though.

Do you then let the temperature rise after the cold crash for the dry hopping? Like to the 62F - 65F area?

 

[shorestyle]

Do you then let the temperature rise after the cold crash for the dry hopping? Like to the 62F - 65F area?

By crashing I meant we drop the temp to 15 C a day or 2 before to floc the yeast (we do Belgian style beers so our beers get pretty warm during the ferm), yeast out on the day we dry hop, dry hop, start the recirc and turn off the glycol to let it free rise

 

[pvpeacock]

Shorestyle: Thanks for weighing in. It is great to hear about a pro-brewers' practices and perspectives. I have a question for you though. Many people here are, for lack of a better term, "paranoid" about oxidation post fermentation. by adding the hops and recirculating after most if not all of the fermentation has finished don't you risk oxidation? Am I missing something? Is your fermenter filled with just beer and CO2? When you add the hops, aren't you adding some oxygen to the fermenter? Is it not really as big a risk as some here think? Any insight would be appreciated.

 

[shorestyle]

Shorestyle: Thanks for weighing in. It is great to hear about a pro-brewers' practices and perspectives. I have a question for you though. Many people here are, for lack of a better term, "paranoid" about oxidation post fermentation. by adding the hops and recirculating after most if not all of the fermentation has finished don't you risk oxidation? Am I missing something? Is your fermenter filled with just beer and CO2? When you add the hops, aren't you adding some oxygen to the fermenter? Is it not really as big a risk as some here think? Any insight would be appreciated.

Yes you need to worry about pushing oxygen in.

To avoid this. we prime the pump and hoses with sanitizer, put a tee on the bottom valve with a valve on the tee. Start the recirc with the valve on the tee open and the tank valve closed then hot swap them (close tee valve, open tank valve simultaneously) once all the sanitizer is pushed out. This way we're not pumping any air through the recirc.

As far as adding the hops, the tank should already have a blanket of co2 above the beer even after fermentation is done. Unless you've had the tank open for some reason for a significant amount of time, there's no way for that co2 blanket to escape. For the short amount of time we have the port on top of the tank open to add the hops I can't see a way oxygen would get in through that blanket. We also add a bit of co2 head pressure on the tank to be sure.