Hop particles in dry-hopped beer. help

[A_C]

I brewed an APA and IPA which were both dry hopped in secondary (one in carboy, one in corny). I used a nylon mesh bag (paint strainer) to hold the pellet hops. Dry hopped for 7 days. I cold crashed for one night, then transferred the next day without moving/disturbing the secondary vessel. I used CO2 to transfer at 3 psi.

All the beers had visible hop particles in them. The beers tasted good, but, at times, I could taste sharp hop notes (like taking a bite directly into hops). I'm assuming this had something to do with the floating hop particles in the beer.

Both had clean racks to serving keg and I didn't suck up trub when I transferred, so I don't know why hop particles made it through. I'm worried that this will happen to my future dry-hopped beers . Do the hop particles need more than one night cold crash to settle to bottom? Is it because I used CO2 to transfer (though I don't see why considering I used very low psi and it wasn't blasting anything through)? Should I ditch pellet hops and dry hop with whole hops?

Any help/solutions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[FunkyDung]

I'm new to kegging and when I dry hopped, I've had great results with cold crashing for at least a week. I've seen others on here recommend at least 3 days but then again, I've never used pellet hops.

 

[day_trippr]

Definitely try a longer cold-crash next time.

I almost always dry hop with free swimming pellets, so there's usually a couple/few ounces of hop mush floating around the fermenter. After 4-5 days of that I chill the beer down to 34°F, which usually takes at least two days from fermentation temperature. Then I'll let it sit at that temp for another day or more to brighten before racking to a keg with a piece of sanitized nylon hop bag covering the siphon tip. I never have problems with hop particles...

Cheers!

 

[Xpertskir]

After one night your beer probably wasn't even down to cold crashing temps.

Cold crash longer and if you condition the keg for a week while you carb. The first pint or so you pull from the keg will have all the extra yeast that's dropped out of solution and some hop particles.

I dry hop most of my beer with pellets in the primary, no sacks or other nonsense and other than the first pint or so my beers have great clarity

 

[LAbrewer]

You can always bottle up the first few until the hop particles mostly dissapear from the keg and then let them age/chill a few weeks until they form sediment.

 

[A_C]

Thanks for the responses.

This has made me realize that I'm probably not cold crashing long enough. I've only been crashing for a night, not even 24 hours :smack:.

I'm probably going to do most my secondary in cornies, so I'm thinking about starting to use bent diptubes with screens on the tip or just cutting the diptube a little. What do you think about that?

 

[beaksnbeer]

Or bag the pellets in the keg

 

[ILBMF]

On my IPA's I'm up to 4 ozs of pellet hops per carboy. I ferment one week, add the hops and let it sit another 10-14 days. No secondary, no cold crash, but when I rack to the keg I tie a sanitized fine mesh bag to the keg end of the hose. This catches pretty much all debris. Also, use a commercial line cleaner every other keg according to instructions. Some serious garbage builds up in the upper area of the lines and inside of the tap faucets which will begin to break loose and get in your glass. This especially happens with heavily hopped IPA's.

On another note, the strong, sharp hop notes could be the type of hops you are using. I tend to use hops with lower cohumulone % and high oil%. Some hops just can be used in higher amounts without going overboard on the harsh flavors. A good mix I recently used in a IPA keg (5 gal) was 1 oz simcoe, 1.5 oz galaxy, 1.5 oz motueka. That's a lot of in your face hops without harshness. Others I like to mix are palisade, amarillo, bravo, mosaic.