Dry Hopping Question

[GoooonSquad]

Dry hopping an IPA tonite. Fermented for 2 weeks in primary, and it seemed pretty much done. (The airlock was bubbling about 5 minutes apart.) I moved it to a 5 gallon carboy to dry hop. To my eye it only seemed like there was about 4 gallons in the carboy.

Is headspace an issue in this situation? Thanks for any help, as always.

 

[northernlad]

THe addition of the hops will kick up enough CO2 to push the air out.

 

[pkeeler]

A lot comes out in the primary fermenter and settles to the bottom. If you rack off of that, you will have significantly less in the secondary fermenter.

 

[smizak]

FYI, it is completely fine to dry hop in your primary vessel. I do it all the time. It helps if you don't use whole hops, pellets sink better, and if you can crash cool it after your dry hop period. The yeast in solution will drag down the rest of the hop stragglers. If you're careful when racking to your bottling bucket/keg, you will have a miniscule amount of hop debris, it tends to get buried in the yeast. I zip tie a sanitized nylon hop bag over the end of my siphon tube, bottling bucket end, to catch anything that might get through.

 

[pkeeler]

The compounds you are looking to extract are destroyed in the process of making pellets. Pellets must add some flavor or aroma because people use them (but so would throwing anything in there), but it is not the same flavor or aroma you will get from plugs or whole hops.

Whether you use a secondary or not, you will have less beer at the end of fermentation than at the start. What the OP noticed was the inch or two of trub left behind when the beer was racked.

 

[smizak]

Pellets must add some flavor or aroma because people use them (but so would throwing anything in there), but it is not the same flavor or aroma you will get from plugs or whole hops.

I don't agree. Some minuscule, negligible amount of hop oils may be destroyed, but it also pulverizes the trichomes of the hop flower which contains those oils, freeing them to be more readily dissolved and isomerized. I've noticed first hand that my beers are more bitter when using hop pellets.

 

[neomantra]

I don't agree. Some minuscule, negligible amount of hop oils may be destroyed, but it also pulverizes the trichomes of the hop flower which contains those oils, freeing them to be more readily dissolved and isomerized. I've noticed first hand that my beers are more bitter when using hop pellets.

more bitter is different than more aroma. i think it was randy mosher's radical brewing book where i read that you need something like 15-25% less pellet hops to achieve the same IBUs as with whole hops. (don't have the book in front of me atm)

mosher also comments that whole hops, in his opinion, produce better aroma because those trichomes aren't being pulverized. conversely i read in sam calagione's extreme brewing book that the guy who founded Avery brewing company (again this is from memory, hopefully i've got the right guy) thinks that using pellet hops are more effective for dry hopping when you want a heavy aroma. so there ya go...2 experts in disagreement.

i'd love to see some sort of math based analysis to get a real answer. but i think to pull it off properly you'd have to grow the hops yourself, and have the gear to make pellets so you could use the exact same crop of hops in both formats and then measure the difference somehow in what they add to the beer during the dry hop. anyone ever heard of such a study? or anything remotely scientific on the matter you could point me to rather than just personal accounts based on perception?

 

[smizak]

I've never seen any studies on pellet vs. whole aroma, but I know Vinnie at Russian River uses pellets, and he's a freak about anything that affects hop aroma. He won't distribute Pliny bottles within a few states from California because he so worried about hop freshness, even with the whole country begging him for it. I figure if a guy like that knew that he could get more aroma out of whole hops, he would be using them.

I tend to use whole hops in the boil, and pellets for dry. It just works out that way for me and my system, I order all my kettle hops in one bulk shipment in the fall from Freshops. I can't swear that I would get less late addition aroma from pellets, but my boil kettle system doesn't like too many pellets, so I can't comment on late hops. I certainly have not noticed any difference in dry hopping, as I have used both. In fact, the pellets seemed to be more assertive. I do know that when I've used bittering additions, oz. for oz. they seemed more bitter than whole.

 

[pkeeler]

Budweiser and Miller didn't dry hop until a few years ago. Homebrewers have really driven this and big research grants don't come from us A lot of stuff is still theoretical, but craft brewers have been doing and supporting more science.

The Alpha Acids are not destroyed when making pellets. These are the bittering compounds (at least the ones we want). But, they only activate when boiled in wort. There are dozens of other essential oils in hops, they are all destroyed when making pellets. So, the alpha oils won't get in while dry hopping, and the other oils (farnesene, et al) aren't there unless you use whole hops or plugs. These other oils are soluble without boiling.

Now, there is more plant material in a pellet, ounce for ounce. So, if you want a plant aroma or flavor, you can probably get that from a pellet.

But, there might be other things going on. The science is not settled. It is interesting that some craft brewers use pellets for dry hopping. I've read about Russian River, but even Vinnie admits to more subtle flavors with whole hops (they use pellets for a faster finish time). British brewers who have dry hopped for centuries, developed the plug for easier dry hopping with whole hops.

 

[BigErn]

So if these oils were destroyed durring peletization would that kill the aroma comming strait from the bag?

Cut open an ounce of pellet hops and give them a whiff. I bet you will smell something.

You may get more aroma from whole hops than pellets, but to say you get no additions from pellets just seems far fetched to me.