Hop formation in Carboy neck.

[sbhank]

Hey guys,

During a vigorous primary fermentation, I think my hops are rising out of the beer with the krausen and getting stuck in the neck of the Carboy. Whenever I open my Carboy after primary the neck is alway entirely clogged with hops. However, the hop formation doesn't seem to be preventing carbon dioxide from escaping the Carboy.

Here's my question: should I push the hops back into the beer, or no? I've been pushing them back in for the last few batches and I've noticed an unpleasant hoppy aftertaste when the product is complete.

What do you guys think? Can I avoid the aftertaste by removing the hop build up after primary?


Thanks!


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[Pie_Man]

Are you talking about dry hops or hop trub that came from the boil kettle?

 

[sbhank]

Hop trub.


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[wilserbrewer]

Bagging the hops in the boil would eliminate them in the fermenter.

 

[Pie_Man]

Hop socks or a hop spider is your friend. I will say, at times I have dumped my entire boil kettle, hop trub and all, into the fermenter and I did not notice this causing any off flavors, although I have never done a side by side comparison of the two techniques.

 

[BBL_Brewer]

It's better to filter the trub out. Even with a good filter system you will still get some crap that sticks around the top edge of the fermentor. A friend of mine dumped the whole contents of the boil kettle in a bucket once without me noticing. It clogged the blow off tube with a quickness once primary kicked in. Blew the bucket lid off. Sounded like a bomb. If you do ever manage to all the way clog up the carboy neck, you could end up with a bottle grenade of epic proportion.

 

[wingedcoyote]

Lots of people dump trub into the FV with no problems, and Brulosopher's recent experiment showed it making only a slight and perhaps a positive difference. Definitely do leave enough headspace or use a fat blowoff to prevent airlock clogs of course.

If you have a lot of whole hops rising up and sitting on top of the beer, that seems fine as long as it doesn't clog the top. I wonder whether having that vegetable matter in contact with the beer isn't giving you your off aftertaste, though. I would try using a bag for hops and pulling them out, OR my actual preferred solution would be to use all pellet hops. Any pellet debris that gets into your FV will sink to the bottom along with the break material etc and get covered up pretty soon by a blanket of yeast.