dry hopping problem

[cicquetto]

I fermented an ipa punk clone, fermentation ended after 1 week with FG1.013. I add 7g / L hop pellets and from that moment the airlock begins to bubble for 2 weeks when I proceed with a taste and the beer has no trace of dry hopping and is completely degassed. FG always stable at 1.013. what happened to my beer?

 

[myndflyte]

So there is no aroma from the dry hopping? Also what happened when you added the hops and that it just caused CO2 to be released from the beer, which is why the airlock started bubbling again. That is normal. But I find it kind of weird that you get no aroma from dry hopping. What hops did you use?

 

[cicquetto]

no, zero aroma. i added chinook, cascade, simcoe, amarillo. the airlock is still bubbling after 3 weeks!

 

[flars]

There can be loss of aroma when dry hopping too early. The CO2 coming out of solution can scrub aromas released from the hops. You saw increased activity through the air lock as the hops created nucleation points for the CO2 which increased the rate of CO2 release. Yeast cells remaining in suspension can also carry hop oils down into the trub layer also reducing aromatics available to go into solution.

Taste again in another week or more. You may want to dry hop a second time after the beer has cleared and much less CO2 remains in solution.

edit: Reread original post. Check the SG again for change.

 

[cicquetto]

ok thanks. i'll add another hop next week.

the beer now is degassed, in priming i have to add more sugar?

 

[flars]

Check the SG again before you do anything else just to make sure it hasn't dropped. I like to use this priming sugar calculator. I always weigh out the amount of sugar to use for better accuracy.
https://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/
I use the same calculator all the time for consistency. I add the priming sugar solution to the bottling bucket

Edit: I add the priming sugar solution to the bottling bucket during racking just before I prepare the bottles.

 

[Gameface]

Also keep in mind, if the beer warms up, the air in the fermentor expands and you'll get some airlock activity.

Airlock activity... just don't put too much stock in airlock activity.

You added dry hops. Proceed to bottling/kegging as planned. Test the results when the beer is ready and decide if you like how it turned out. If not maybe add more. If yeah then party on!

Just move forward. I'm not a fan of "fixing" beer. Just learning and moving forward.

And seriously, you're at FG, check it a million times if it makes you or anyone else feel better. You're at FG. Just move forward.

 

[stz]

You don't need to dry hop for 7 days at room temperature unless you are adding them quite early on, though it certainly isn't the end of the world. co2 scrubbing is not what I'd be looking at if you have no hop aroma from 7g/L, I'd be looking at the variety used, age and condition and if they've actually broken up in the beer. I'm sure they have, but you never know. I've had them clumped together at the bottom especially when the vacuum packaging has been aggressive.

I've started dry hopping when the beer is 'done' but not yet confirmed with successive unmoving hydrometer readings because it soon will be. You start to get a feel for attenuation and certain strains and you just know that a big beer is not going to shift much from .010 at this point based on activity and the fact it is cooling off. If it does it'll be fractions of points.

I also tend to seal up at this point because I'm going to be cold crashing soon and I don't want suck back. Also I can shake the fermenter easier half way through the dry hop.

Commercially we get all sorts of problems with beer coming over in tanks from dry hopping during active fermentation or warm. It is nice to be able to drop to 16C because this stabilises the co2 enough to limit it though it is a toss up between the beer being done, the beer having time to chill, having long enough on the dry hop and needing the tank or needing to package. We like to make a slurry, but it will introduce oxygen so we like to use dry pellets, but getting them to break up (especially certain types, galaxy, simcoe, el dorado, high alpha more expensive ones where they seem to add a lot of fibrous material) isn't a given so we'll carefully blow co2 in through the bottom to rouse them back up into suspension. This is also why we like to double dry hop (less risk of compaction thus better utilisation at the bottom of the conical). This is why more high tech setups employ hop torpedo, cannons, rockets etc. Also we love fermenting under pressure because you aren't blowing off more than needed and you aren't getting the fobbing.

Anecdotally I recently stuck to my guns regarding wort being transferred onto dry hop before pitching. This was a stupid idea and you'll lose aromatics during fermentation, yeast will drag the hop oils to the bottom, they'll all stick to the tank at high krausen, biotransformation is real but are you sure this yeast has an active gene for encoding beta glucosidase enyzme, it might work, but is it best use and so on. We fermented under pressure (22psi) and I had to take it back because the beer smelt and tasted like sweets and mango juice even before the rest of the dry hopping regime. I'd have to AB it to see if it was a better use of the dry hops, but under a pressurised ferment co2 did not scrub much from those hops.

 

[isomerization]

I agree with the 2 previous posts. I’d also add that uncarbonated samples will have less aroma, sometimes significantly less.