How do I keep hop matter out of my kegged beer?

[vance]

I have my first kegged batch on tap at the moment and to be frank, it's pretty bad. It has that extremely bitter taste I associate with straight hops - not a pleasant bitter, just awful. I don't get any of the actual taste of my hops (centennial and azacca), and I can clearly see hop matter floating around in the beer I pour.

When I bottled this was never an issue because I would just leave some beer in the bottom of the bottle, and if it was cold that's where all the yeast trub and hop matter was. Apparently, with kegging that doesn't work.

What do I do with future batches, and is there any way to save this one?

 

[kev211]

How long has it been in the keg? I've enver associated straight hop debris with being overly bitter. Do you have a second keg? You can always push from one keg to another and leave all the stuff behind that has essentially "cold crashed" its way to the bottom.

One thing I always do with my kegs is cutt off about 1/4" of the dib tube. Id rather lose a pint of beer than deal with any hop matter or yeast that has fallen out of suspension.

What was your kegging process? if you agitated the carboy/fermenter at all or had the autosiphon too low than extra sediment would be a definite problem.

Have you considered or do you have the means to cold crash? I dont cold crash because I was having oxidation issues when I did, but thats one option to look into

 

[vance]

How long has it been in the keg? I've enver associated straight hop debris with being overly bitter. Do you have a second keg? You can always push from one keg to another and leave all the stuff behind that has essentially "cold crashed" its way to the bottom.

One thing I always do with my kegs is cutt off about 1/4" of the dib tube. Id rather lose a pint of beer than deal with any hop matter or yeast that has fallen out of suspension.

What was your kegging process? if you agitated the carboy/fermenter at all or had the autosiphon too low than extra sediment would be a definite problem.

Have you considered or do you have the means to cold crash? I dont cold crash because I was having oxidation issues when I did, but thats one option to look into

Been in about 3 days - I figure it might improve a bit as time goes on, but I'm not super hopeful. I have a second keg that's not full at the moment, I suppose I could do that... describe how you would do that exactly? I'm still getting the hang of the kegging process. Would you force the beer in through the gas inlet post or something, or just remove the lid of the keg?

Uhh... I moved the bucket up to a higher place, left it alone for an hour or two, and siphoned into my keg. I don't think my siphoning is that great, I kept seeing times where I'd be accidentally pulling a ton of trub into the fermenter and have to move the siphon around. Still haven't figured out the best way to get 100% clean beer and no trub when siphoning unfortunately. Like I mentioned, how well I siphon didn't seem to matter when bottling because I always left a bit in the bottling bucket, and I always left some in each bottle when I poured a glass too - that seemed to get rid of basically all the trub and hop matter.

I didn't cold crash this time... I *might* be able to squeeze a bucket into my keezer. I'm not sure if that'd do anything though, I'd have to lift it out again to get it to a proper height to siphon and that'd shake it right back up. I can sort of cold crash using a cooler full of water and a bunch of frozen gallon water jugs, I didn't this time though...

 

[val214]

Sanitized Mesh bag at the end of your siphon hose. [emoji106]🏼

 

[kev211]

Obviously the 'best' option would be to push it from your bucket to the keg using CO2 so you didnt have to move the bucket. That being said, I would probably do the mesh bag over the end of the auto-siphon.

To push from one keg to another, you would basically hook a liquid line from one liquid 'out' to the other 'out' and push with co2. Its a little "advanced" but definitely doable. I actually just had to do it with a keg of mine that was excessively cloudy.

At this point, if it were me, I would let it finish carbonating, then purge the co2 and pull the liquid out dip tube, cut about 1/4" (with a pipe cutter if you have access to one) remove the burrs with a some light sanding, sanitize the crap out of it and put it back together, re-attach the CO2 and see if that helps

 

[vance]

Don't have any sort of pipe cutter at the moment... If it continues I may find access to one, idk.

I feel like putting a bag over the strainer would introduce a ton of oxygen from the splashing, no? I've looked into the co2 pushed transfers but I'm not sure how that would work from a bucket - I've only seen it done out of a carboy.

 

[kev211]

Don't have any sort of pipe cutter at the moment... If it continues I may find access to one, idk.

I feel like putting a bag over the strainer would introduce a ton of oxygen from the splashing, no? I've looked into the co2 pushed transfers but I'm not sure how that would work from a bucket - I've only seen it done out of a carboy.

Probably wouldn't work from a bucket. The mesh bag would go over the end of the siphon that goes into the bucket. So it filters it before it even enters the autosiphon

 

[mcl]

Wait a couple of weeks. Then pull off a pint or two of trub. You will have much clearer beer after that. You could also use gelatin to speed up the process. In the future try to get less trub when racking to the keg.

 

[GPP33]

Did you dry hop in the keg? If so did you use a bag for the hops? I know the flavor you're getting. I tried to leave some hops in the keg recently (in a bag) and it was terrible. Smelled great but tasted terrible. Pulled the hop bags out and everything was fine.

If your hops are all in there loose they have probably sunk and may have made a hop debri cake that's simply too big to flush out. A strainer on your pickup tube won't help, you'll need to siphon it off. I can't imagine cutting the pickup tube would be feasible either as 3 or 4 ounces of pellet hops would make quite a thick layer on the bottom.

 

[FrozenOcean]

Wait a couple of weeks. Then pull off a pint or two of trub. You will have much clearer beer after that. You could also use gelatin to speed up the process. In the future try to get less trub when racking to the keg.

Do this. It's simple, and it'll solve all your problems. Basically you transferred more crap into your keg than you probably should have. But if you let it settle for a couple of weeks, you'll be able to pull that off the bottom in the first two pints, and then you'll be pulling clear beer after that.

And make sure for the two week period that you let it sit, that it's sitting in the kegerator at a nice low temperature. And after that, try not to move the keg around. That'll stir crap up too.

 

[RevKev]

Use Knox Gelatin in your kegs!!!

1/2 packet per 5 gallons of beer. Use about 2/3 cup of water mix in Gelatin and microwave until 155-160°F (usually 20 second intervals does the trick) let it sit and bloom for 20 minutes and put it right in the keg. The colder the keg gets the better, let it sit for 1-3 days and then pour off a pint at medium-high pressure clean beer thereafter. Gelatin will pull haze forming particulates and flocculant yeast out of solution

 

[user 70770]

Is this hops from dry hoping or from kettle hoping? If it's kettle hoping, I whirlpool my beer in the kettle after it's cooled to pitching temperature. Give it a good swirl then let it sit undisturbed for 20 or so minutes. All the trub and hop matter will settle towards the center and you can siphon your beer to your fermentor from the side and prevent a lot of the crap from getting in there in the first place.

Adding finning agents to your beer at this point won't help for hop debris floating around. As pointed out, just leave the keg undisturbed for a few days and let all the stuff settle at the bottom. The first pint or two will be turbid but after that the beer will be clear.

Also I'm pretty sure bitter hop compounds degrade over time so that heavy bitterness will subside by letting the beer age in a cold environment for 2-3 weeks.