Dry hopping with Leaf hops

[Calder]

I've been brewing beer on and off for almost 15 years, and never used leaf hops for dry-hopping. Always used pellets, probably because 90% of my haps have been pellets.

I'm going to make a Citra IPA and have leaf Citra hops, and will need to use them for dry hopping. What is the best way to use them?

With pellets I just add them to the beer, and in 10 to 14 days they have settled on the bottom and I can bottle the beer with out any problems.

Do I do the same with leaf? Will they sink, will they cause problems with racking to the bottling bucket?

I could put them in a sanitized bag and weigh them down with marbles (how many are needed?), but I would prefer to let them swim freely as I feel there would be better extraction that way.

Any advice.

 

[mrk305]

I have only done it once. You are going to want to add it after your beer has finished the initial bubbly part of the ferment. They take up a ton of space. Dry hoping at first will definatley limit your bucket or carboy space and risk a clogged blow off, so let it settle down. Rack like usual.

 

[Calder]

I know when to dry-hop, probably done it a hundred times. I've just never used leaf before. Wanted to see if anyone had any tips to minimize problems.

 

[cheier]

Shouldn't be any issues other than the fact that leaf hops will tend to absorb more water. They will also play hell on your (auto) siphon when you try to rack the beer out of your carboy/bucket/keg if they aren't contained in a hop sock or bag of some sort.

 

[remilard]

Get a thing called a sure screen. About $8 max. If you keg, dry hop in the keg* and put this thing on the diptube. Otherwise put it on your racking cane.

* My procedure is to purge the ever loving hell out of the keg with co2, add the hops, purge some more, fill through the sure screen covered diptube, dry hop about 7 days at 65-70 F, shake every day, jump to a new keg.

 

[fastricky]

Get a thing called a sure screen. About $8 max. If you keg, dry hop in the keg* and put this thing on the diptube. Otherwise put it on your racking cane.

* My procedure is to purge the ever loving hell out of the keg with co2, add the hops, purge some more, fill through the sure screen covered diptube, dry hop about 7 days at 65-70 F, shake every day, jump to a new keg.

I am about to do this exact technique and thought I might try to mimic the 'Torpedo' idea - where I recirc the beer between kegs, with one of the kegs filled with leaf hops and with a sure screen on the out dip tube...

 

[calpyro]

Get a thing called a sure screen. About $8 max. If you keg, dry hop in the keg* and put this thing on the diptube. Otherwise put it on your racking cane.

* My procedure is to purge the ever loving hell out of the keg with co2, add the hops, purge some more, fill through the sure screen covered diptube, dry hop about 7 days at 65-70 F, shake every day, jump to a new keg.

I use whole hops exclusively and use a Surescreen in a Corney Keg. http://www.northernbrewer.com/default/catalogsearch/result/?q=surescreen&x=23&y=8
My technique to get the hops quickly into the beer, reduce, the oxygen pickup and reduce the beer absorption is to coarsely chop the whole hops with a food processor.
By chopping the hops and putting directly into the keg, the hop utilization is essentially the same as pellet hops. This is my secret to getting great hop flavor in my beer. Please, don’t tell anybody.

 

[Pappers_]

Here's a picture of dry hopping an amber ale with whole leaf hops, to give you an idea - they float on top and do absorb some wort. I just racked from underneath them.

http://www.singingboysbrewing.com/Amber-Ale.html

 

[umopepisdn]

LOL, I have only dry hopped with leaf. never pellets. All I do is make the batch a tad heavy to make up for loss that all the hops soak up

 

[calpyro]

Here's a picture of dry hopping an amber ale with whole leaf hops, to give you an idea - they float on top and do absorb some wort. I just racked from underneath them.

http://www.singingboysbrewing.com/Amber-Ale.html

The next time you use whole hops, chop them in a food processor and they will mix in well with the beer fairly quickly. They will not soak up as much beer as they form a more compact layer at the bottom of your vessel.
When I do it, I purge the container with CO2 and shake the chopped up hops to remove all of the O2 that I can. By breaking up the hop cone structure, I can remove most of the little pockets of air between the cone bracks that trap air which can cause hoppy beers to become stale.

 

[Northcalais40]

I never gave it a second thought, just throw them in and they float. I use an auto siphon with a little plastic cap over the end (it came that way). Some times a stray bit makes it to the bottling bucket, big deal.

 

[Bubba]

The next time you use whole hops, chop them in a food processor and they will mix in well with the beer fairly quickly. They will not soak up as much beer as they form a more compact layer at the bottom of your vessel.
When I do it, I purge the container with CO2 and shake the chopped up hops to remove all of the O2 that I can. By breaking up the hop cone structure, I can remove most of the little pockets of air between the cone bracks that trap air which can cause hoppy beers to become stale.

I like this idea Im gonna try this I have and IPA I was going to dry hop with some whole leaf cascades I think I will run them through the food processor do you think you can get away with less hops being that they get chopped up?

 

[pfooti]

I put them in a hopsack with a heavy piece of stainless steel (I have some FPT junctions) to weight them down. I find when I don't do that, the leaf hops form a little raft at the top of the carboy and get jammed up into the neck. A small amount of CO2 forms below them, floats them up, and they end up pushing beer into the airlock. It's annoying. It's also annoying to have to rack through a strainer- my cane gets all jammed up with leaves as well.

In a bucket, I'd probably just toss them in. But in a carboy, they're fairly annoying.

 

[calpyro]

I like this idea Im gonna try this I have and IPA I was going to dry hop with some whole leaf cascades I think I will run them through the food processor do you think you can get away with less hops being that they get chopped up?

I can’t really quantify how much less you need. However, I am confident that you get better hop utilization. There have been many times that I have taken a whole cone that has been used for dry hopping and opened it up and it is still full of luplin.
This is one of the reasons that I started chopping hops in a food processor. By chopping them, the luplin is immediately accessible to the beer.

 

[calpyro]

I put them in a hopsack with a heavy piece of stainless steel (I have some FPT junctions) to weight them down. I find when I don't do that, the leaf hops form a little raft at the top of the carboy and get jammed up into the neck. A small amount of CO2 forms below them, floats them up, and they end up pushing beer into the airlock. It's annoying. It's also annoying to have to rack through a strainer- my cane gets all jammed up with leaves as well.

In a bucket, I'd probably just toss them in. But in a carboy, they're fairly annoying.

I mentioned it before, but the Surescreen http://www.northernbrewer.com/default/surescreen.html Is a really great thing if you keg. It slips over the pickup tube of the corney keg and it does a great job of filtering out the hop particles. In combination with chopping hops, it is a great tool to get big dry hop flavors. The hops are not constrained within a bag and just mix freely in the beer with 100% contact.
If you like stupid levels of hops, it is the ticket. For $8 it not that much more than a hop bag. I certainly will last longer.