Dry Hopping Techniques

[specharka]

As I've had a couple of issues the last few times I tried dry hopping, I wanted to get some advice from the community on what the best approach is to maximize the flavor and aroma while dry hopping. I will be experimenting with hopstands in the near future, but I have some concerns that my dry hopping techniques are not up to snuff.

1) Do you transfer to a secondary vessel before you dry hop? I understand that precluding oxidation is of paramount importance when dry hopping. So does it even make sense to use a secondary vessel with a APA / IPA / DIPA? What is the preferred vessel (bucket or carboy) for dry hopping?

2) How do you prevent hop excrement from contaminating your bottles / keg after the beer has been dry hopped? I usually use a muslin bag in my fermenter, but I've found that it doesn't diffuse aroma as well as I would like it to, and they are extremely difficult to remove from a glass carboy.

3) How do you avoid vegetal flavors in beer when keg hopping? I would like to experiment with keg hopping, but I am concerned that my slow consumption rate (1 keg / 2 months) would allow vegetal flavors to develop due to extended contact with hops.

4) Lastly, what are the repercussions from using whole cone hops over pelletized hops? I would also like to experiment using whole hops (especially in keg hopping), but I am not sure about the implications with regards to hopping rates and how they affect the final flavor.

Help a dry hopping newb out!

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

I can't comment on kegging but you don't need to transfer to secondary. You can just dry hop in primary. I use a hop bag but you can put pellets in loose. Just cold crash for 24-48 hours before you bottle or keg and the hops will settle out. Just rack above them. The main draw back with whole cone hops is that they absorb ALOT of brew. Plan accordingly.

 

[Dolomieu]

1) Personally I do not transfer when dry hopping but I almost always use a bucket, barrel or conical. This makes it easy to get the hops in.

2) cold crashing helps with this, especially with pellets. Fining with gelatin will also help if you still have some bit floating around.

3) I have never had an issue with this. My consumption rate is similar. I think the cold temps help. When I keg hop I usually use leaf and a paint stainer bag. I the usually tie it to the long dip tube. If you like you can move it up the dip tube so that after half the keg is gone, the hops are no longer in the beer. I usually keep it near the bottom.

4) I use both pellet and leaf but prefer leaf in keg hopping. It's just easier to keep them in the bag. Not that floating hop debris turns me off, but not all folks have the same point of view. Leaf always gives me nice and clear wort to the fermenter, but pellet will still give you nice clear beer. It's just usually after letting the debris settle.

I like pellet for storage and leaf for keg hopping. Other than those two things, it doesn't make much of a difference to me.

 

[m00ps]

^agree with everything above

Never had issue with vegetal aroma. Even leaving keg hops in for months

But mostly, id stress DO NOT SECONDARY TO DRY HOP. Ever. All it will do is produce some degree of oxidation which will strip away what precious hop aroma you already have imparted. Its entirely counterproductive

 

[Queequeg]

1) oxidation is bad (even micro oxidation) when it comes to hop aroma. I have read few commercial breweries aim for no more than 1ppb of dissolved O2. That said yeast cell walls also absorb hop oils so it is arguably better in this regard to move the beer off the yeast before dry hopping. The latter effect is less impacting than the former so unless you have a conical or can transfer under a closed system then its best in most instances to dry hop in the primary

2) there is always the issue hop/wort occlusion relating to a critical mass of hops by weight to container size. Even by adding them directly to the fermenter some will be occluded. The only why around this is agitation or controlled flow over a hop bed. However this is not possible without risk of oxygenating the beer unless you have a closed fermentation system.

3) keep the beer cool, hop modestly and drink quickly

4) cones trap more air and so naturally introduce more oxygen and occlusion issues. In an agitated system there's no difference. IMO cones are no more for lightly hopped beers and should be added to the boil or stand.

 

[specharka]

2) there is always the issue hop/wort occlusion relating to a critical mass of hops by weight to container size. Even by adding them directly to the fermenter some will be occluded. The only why around this is agitation or controlled flow over a hop bed. However this is not possible without risk of oxygenating the beer unless you have a closed fermentation system.

Are you saying that there is a terminal quantity of hop aroma which can be absorbed by the beer based upon the fermenter geometry? Can you explain this a little bit more?

 

[Queequeg]

Are you saying that there is a terminal quantity of hop aroma which can be absorbed by the beer based upon the fermenter geometry? Can you explain this a little bit more?

In my personal experience yes. Its ok when you are hopping relatively small amounts but when you start upping your dry hop there are issues with uniform and complete saturation of the hops with wort simply due to mechanics and geometry.

If I do a 6 oz dry hop lose into 8.7Gallon fermenter (into a 7G batch) the hops will float. Many however will sit out of the wort and the only contact with the wort from these hops is via capillary action. This is evident with pellet, even moreso with cones. This is my own experience using a bucket, when I have hopped with cones in a narrow neck carboy its even more visible.

The solution you will see from many is to put the hops in weighted bag or cage, but though all the hops are submersed the capacity of the bag/cage is limited to about 3 oz maximum. sometime when retrieving such dry hop bags I have notice the interior hops to be somewhat drier. When you see photos of bulging hop bags imo that is suboptional and you are probably not getting much return for your extra hops.

Also if the hops sink, there suffer the same fate if they are allowed to fall into the trub, the solution to this will bags is to weight them and suspend them off the bottom with some fishing line. No big effort their.

But you are still limited to small dry hop quantities. This is why multistage dry hopping was developed. In a conical the yeast can be drain off, when the hops sink they can be drained and new supply added. On the homebrew scale you can add a hop bag of say 2oz, leave it three days, pull it and repeat. Problem is you get a lot of microoxidation buy doing this which negates all the benefit.

Studies with agitation show very fast extraction and Serra Nevada built a hop torpedo for this purpose. Also I know a few posters on this forum have had success with agitation systems. This is fairly advanced dry hopping and a lot more complicated, expensive and time consuming for what I suspect is relatively limit improvement.

If you happy with keeping things simple dry hop around 3oz, using a weighted bag suspended on fishing line. More hops after that your'll get significantly diminished return without some sort of agitation.

Keep to 3oz and work on keeping O2 out of your beer by flushing the head space with CO2.

I am building my torpedo system as we speak, when its done I plan to do a thread on the build report back on brew improvements or lack of. This will include a closed system secondary

 

[J-Rock44]

Very curious about your Hop Torpedo??
...Have any sites that are worth mentioning about this product or build? cant wait to see your pics.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

Stainlessbrewing makes a nice dry hopping "torpedo"

http://www.stainlessbrewing.com/Dry-Hopper-with-twist-cap_p_155.html

Basically a long stainless mesh tube like a hop spider you put in your keg and can drop stuff into and cap off...at $46 its a bit steep but i may get one eventually..i like the idea of being able to throw wood chips and fruit or other things directly into the keg. In theory they(fruit) shouldnt go bad because there is no oxygen.

 

[Queequeg]

That's not really torpedo as far as I understand.

A torpedo is basically a stainless steel chamber smaller than the main fermenter which contains the hops. A pump then recirculates the beer between the main fermenter and the smaller chamber in doing so the entire batch is pass across the entire hop charge during the course of the dry hopping period.

Since the pump, lines and torpedo can be purged of O2 and the hops are both agitated, completely saturated and diffusion if oils is assisted extract should in principle be better where the hop charge is big.

The extent of the benefit for this type of set up is debatable on small scale, but IMO a part of the hobby is experimentation and project building.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

That's not really torpedo as far as I understand.

A torpedo is basically a stainless steel chamber smaller than the main fermenter which contains the hops. A pump then recirculates the beer between the main fermenter and the smaller chamber in doing so the entire batch is pass across the entire hop charge during the course of the dry hopping period.

Since the pump, lines and torpedo can be purged of O2 and the hops are both agitated, completely saturated and diffusion if oils is assisted extract should in principle be better where the hop charge is big.

The extent of the benefit for this type of set up is debatable on small scale, but IMO a part of the hobby is experimentation and project building.

Gotcha.

 

[joshesmusica]

As I've had a couple of issues the last few times I tried dry hopping, I wanted to get some advice from the community on what the best approach is to maximize the flavor and aroma while dry hopping. I will be experimenting with hopstands in the near future, but I have some concerns that my dry hopping techniques are not up to snuff.

1) Do you transfer to a secondary vessel before you dry hop? I understand that precluding oxidation is of paramount importance when dry hopping. So does it even make sense to use a secondary vessel with a APA / IPA / DIPA? What is the preferred vessel (bucket or carboy) for dry hopping?

2) How do you prevent hop excrement from contaminating your bottles / keg after the beer has been dry hopped? I usually use a muslin bag in my fermenter, but I've found that it doesn't diffuse aroma as well as I would like it to, and they are extremely difficult to remove from a glass carboy.

3) How do you avoid vegetal flavors in beer when keg hopping? I would like to experiment with keg hopping, but I am concerned that my slow consumption rate (1 keg / 2 months) would allow vegetal flavors to develop due to extended contact with hops.

4) Lastly, what are the repercussions from using whole cone hops over pelletized hops? I would also like to experiment using whole hops (especially in keg hopping), but I am not sure about the implications with regards to hopping rates and how they affect the final flavor.

Help a dry hopping newb out!

1) No. I don't. No reason to. If you're harvesting the yeast, just use a sanitized spoon to scrape the hops of the top of the yeast cake. As others have said, this is only a chance to introduce oxygen, unless you're transferring with a completely closed system. Which I doubt you are, considering the question.

2) You should try cold crashing. If you don't have the capability to do that, then unfortunately you can't avoid this problem. Also, gelatin works really well for this. You basically want to cold crash for 24 hours, then add the gelatin (look up on youtube the best way to do this), then keep it at near-freezing temps for another 48 hrs afterward. For anybody that thinks using gelatin will make you lose hop-aroma, I say: 1) ok, then add another 1/4 ounce of hops, or 2) http://brulosophy.com/2015/01/05/the-gelatin-effect-exbeeriment-results/

3) I don't have much experience with keg-hopping. Just done my first one, and haven't kicked the keg yet. But, from a strictly "scientific" standpoint, chemical reactions occur at a significantly slower rate at refrigerator temperatures as compared to room temps. I would think that you would need to keg-hop for something around 6 months to get the same effect as dry-hopping at room temps for 2 weeks; given that you're keg-hopping at fridge temps.

4) The repercussions are that they absorb quite a bit of liquid, and you need to be prepared for that. Although, if you drink the keg down so that the bag is floating, and then wait a couple of days before consuming the rest, they should potentially drip dry again. Other than that, I personally would only keg-hop if I had whole cone hops (hence why I've only done it once). I don't have a mesh bag that is "fine" enough to control all of the gunk that would come out of keg-hopping with pellets. Plus, whole-cone will give off more aroma than pellet, assuming that they are equally fresh.

Some further suggestions: The more the better! Don't be afraid to see what the difference between 1 oz and 3 oz is. If you're keg-hopping at fridge temps, it will take quite a bit of time for the entire batch to be affected. I would personally put a bit of pressure on the keg (enough to purge the headspace and get a good seal on the lid), and leave it for 5 days before I put it in the fridge. This will give it a chance to absorb the essential oils from the hops, and then crashing it to fridge temps will slow down any further chemical reactions so that you shouldn't get any vegetal flavors.

 

[douglasbarbin]

As I've had a couple of issues the last few times I tried dry hopping, I wanted to get some advice from the community on what the best approach is to maximize the flavor and aroma while dry hopping. I will be experimenting with hopstands in the near future, but I have some concerns that my dry hopping techniques are not up to snuff.

1) Do you transfer to a secondary vessel before you dry hop? I understand that precluding oxidation is of paramount importance when dry hopping. So does it even make sense to use a secondary vessel with a APA / IPA / DIPA? What is the preferred vessel (bucket or carboy) for dry hopping?

2) How do you prevent hop excrement from contaminating your bottles / keg after the beer has been dry hopped? I usually use a muslin bag in my fermenter, but I've found that it doesn't diffuse aroma as well as I would like it to, and they are extremely difficult to remove from a glass carboy.

3) How do you avoid vegetal flavors in beer when keg hopping? I would like to experiment with keg hopping, but I am concerned that my slow consumption rate (1 keg / 2 months) would allow vegetal flavors to develop due to extended contact with hops.

4) Lastly, what are the repercussions from using whole cone hops over pelletized hops? I would also like to experiment using whole hops (especially in keg hopping), but I am not sure about the implications with regards to hopping rates and how they affect the final flavor.

Help a dry hopping newb out!

1. I never do a secondary unless a) the beer is being racked onto fruit, or b) the "secondary" is a barrel

2. I use almond "nut milk" bags (giggle) which are a finer mesh than a muslin bag. I also fine with gelatin and cold-crash, so there is almost no hop debris that makes it out of the fermenter.

3. The higher the temperature when dry hopping, the more hop flavor (and eventually "grassy" flavor) will be extracted. If you dry hop in a refrigerated keg, it will be a very long time before you have to worry about off-flavors, in my experience. I usually dry hop at ~72 degrees for a few days, then remove the hop bag from the fermenter, keg, and put in the keezer. Or, if I am keg hopping, I leave the hop bag inside the keg until it is empty.

4. Supposedly, whole-cone hops have a "fresher" flavor and aroma, but I never use them because they soak up so much beer.