How to make Hop Plugs or Hop Pellets

[GVH_Dan]

The basic idea of pelletizing is to reduce the volume for easier storage, less mess during the brewing process and reduce oxidation due to air contact with the hop.

In theory, you could just use the mill powder except it still takes up a lot of storage volume, leaves itself even more exposed to air for oxidation and there will have to be a lot of stirring to get it into the beer. It act like hot chocolate and floats in clumps on the surface.

Cooling the pellets is absolutely necessary. You loose alpha acids above 140F and you start loosing essential oils at around 100F. We keep our pelletizer below this during production.

 

[fattymattybrewing]

First step is to hammermill them into smaller pieces...basically grind them but in a softer process so there isn't as much damage to the lupulin.

Dan, how can we use gentle grinding to avoid damaging the glands while making hops into a powder form (in prep for pelletization).

 

[Naked_Hops]

So any advice for a small time guy like myself? Should I just change my marketing strategy? Work on finding an appropriate mill? Give up and grow corn?

 

[GVH_Dan]

Dan, how can we use gentle grinding to avoid damaging the glands while making hops into a powder form (in prep for pelletization).

OK, gentle grinding maybe isn't the right way to describe it. You use a hammermill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammermill as opposed to a blade grinder (i.e. coffee grinder)

The hops aren't beaten into a complete powder, rather the screen lets them out as soon as they reach the desired size instead of over-smacking them like an industrial coffee grinder would do.

 

[GVH_Dan]

So any advice for a small time guy like myself? Should I just change my marketing strategy? Work on finding an appropriate mill? Give up and grow corn?

Well, either you need to find a market for whole hops...which isn't impossible...or you need to find a way to pelletize or at least make hop plugs.

In some areas, brewers have said they would be fine with whole hops. We'll see if that holds up. Homebrewers often will use whole hops, but that requires a lot of labor to package everything by the ounce.

Either way, you will have to dry the hops because when your production ramps up you will not be able to sell them all for wet hopped beers. So before you worry too much about pelletizing or not, make sure you can get them properly dried.

Don't switch to corn. You'll miss out on a lot of fun. Come June and July, I have my kids tie a string at the top of the bine every week. Its hilarious to watch them gasp when they see a foot of growth a week.

 

[Naked_Hops]

Ok, I won't pack it in just yet. I'll just stick to whole hops for now, and work on the pellets later I guess.

 

[fattymattybrewing]

OK, gentle grinding maybe isn't the right way to describe it. You use a hammermill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammermill as opposed to a blade grinder (i.e. coffee grinder)

The hops aren't beaten into a complete powder, rather the screen lets them out as soon as they reach the desired size instead of over-smacking them like an industrial coffee grinder would do.

Cool thanks for sharing. Its nice to get your personal experience perspective Dan!

 

[lukusw]

OK, gentle grinding maybe isn't the right way to describe it. You use a hammermill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammermill as opposed to a blade grinder (i.e. coffee grinder)

The hops aren't beaten into a complete powder, rather the screen lets them out as soon as they reach the desired size instead of over-smacking them like an industrial coffee grinder would do.

Thank you for your sharing your expreince with us.

 

[PelletComp]

I own and operate http://www.PelletComp.com

We primarily make alfalfa, corn, grass feedstock pellets as well as some other products.

I can tell you from many years of experience with a pellet mill that

1) If you think you are going to buy a cheap (under $10K) pellet mill, throw some material in and get pellets you are wrong.

Making pellets is an art... it requires proper temperatures, moisture levels, lignin content, and a very consistent and proper feed rate into the mill.

These cheap chinese made mills (some may say "American motor" but they still have a chinese MILL) are garbage. They jam, plug, wear parts wear wrong or uneven, bog down, the list goes on and on...

sure you can buy them all day long for about $2k... trust me they are garbage.

You must consider a consistent feed rate (simply hand feeding them is tiring and causes many moisture level flukes which result to plugging. The result is to buy or build a good variable speed hydraulic controlled conveyor belt with a hopper. Theres another $3k if you build it yourself 4-5k+ if you buy one.

On hammer mills... they make A LOT OF DUST. consider ventilating the shop space with filters or doing it outside only. Might as well call it a dust mill. However shredders are much less dust.

Im in Monroe, WA... bring me 40lbs of hops and we can figure it out at my mill.... at the price per pound for pelleted hops im tempted to give it a shot, but i dont know anything about brewing and I have a lot of responsibility to my livestock owners to provide high quality feeds.

theres much much much more to it than anyone on this thread has even considered... i do this professionally for a living.

Cheers to you beer guys!

 

[GVH_Dan]

Slight zombie thread but its popping up at the time of season when people start thinking about this.

PelletComp, you are right but there's a lot more to it than just that. We've learned much more since this post started 2 years ago.

Flat die pellet mills...Chinese built or otherwise...do not work. The oils and other sticky stuff in the hops jam them up very quickly. To keep them running, the feed rate must be slowed WAY down. So you are talking a very expensive ring die pellet mill.

Using a standard ring die doesn't work either. It took us a lot of experimenting to get the hole specifications just right.

You DO NOT want to compress these under high heat like wood or ag food. There is no lignin in hops. They hold together via their own sticky-ness. High heat destroys the alpha acids, boils off the oils and turns the pellets into waxy crayons. What do I mean by high heat? Anything over 100F.

So how do we achieve that? We use liquid nitrogen to keep the die around -40F. That gives us a pretty good pellet that shows no signs of degradation compared to the original cone. Anyone who is using "cold air" either in the die or cooling it immediately upon leaving the die is going to suffer. Unless you a forcing massive amounts of -50F air into the die, you won't have the same cooling capacity. Likewise, quickly cooling the pellet after compression does you no good. The damage is all ready done.

The other advantage of using nitrogen is we are able to provide a blanket of the gas over the hammer mill, conveyor, pelletizer, next conveyor, and then packaging. This means from the moment we break up the cone, it is protected from oxygen. Is this a bit anal retentive? Well, our chemist doesn't think so.

You are also right on the variable speed. We have VFD's on everything as we found the speed of even the pellet mill should vary by cone variety and size.

Its been one trying adventure trying to get this right....but interesting.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. As soon as we had this process all set up, the State of Wisconsin changed the rules and we were subject to USDA inspection and GMP criteria. So we had to move the whole operation to a facility that we could washdown, upgrade everything to stainless steel or food grade, set up inventory tracking and a thousand other things. We are close to obtaining a USDA grant so we can write some of this information up for the "small scale" hop processors and distribute it. So if you are thinking of selling your hops, check to see if your state requires a license or you could be in major trouble. I know WI and NY have added requirements recently as have other states that escape me.

 

[GVH_Dan]

Anyone know if NakedHops did switch to corn? Given the utter failure of the crop out here in the drought struck midwest, it may have been a good move. Not as much fun, but a good fiscal idea.

 

[PariahVineyard]

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. As soon as we had this process all set up, the State of Wisconsin changed the rules and we were subject to USDA inspection and GMP criteria. So we had to move the whole operation to a facility that we could washdown, upgrade everything to stainless steel or food grade, set up inventory tracking and a thousand other things. We are close to obtaining a USDA grant so we can write some of this information up for the "small scale" hop processors and distribute it. So if you are thinking of selling your hops, check to see if your state requires a license or you could be in major trouble. I know WI and NY have added requirements recently as have other states that escape me.

All the information you provide is great. But it just gives me more things to worry about as we are trying to get into growing hops. :cross:

Hopefully PA doesn't have these requirements. Just one more thing to look up.

 

[Revvy]

Actually even older than this thread is a DIY thread where someone made a simple pelletizer IIRC using a bullet casing and a dowel.

 

[GVH_Dan]

All the information you provide is great. But it just gives me more things to worry about as we are trying to get into growing hops. :cross:

Hopefully PA doesn't have these requirements. Just one more thing to look up.

What I've found is that the states pretty much stay out of it until something starts happening and they see a new potential revenue stream. "Whoa, look at that. This industry is starting to pick up...we better send out inspectors and tax collectors." Just check with your department of commerce and/or department of agriculture.

 

[PelletComp]

@GVH Dan

Im not implying by any means that were going to start pelleting hops. We are a livestock feed company with a responsibility of reliability to our existing customers not to get stretched too thin on other crazy products. We do what we do and just do that well.

I might just want a personal challenge of conquering a new process. We have successfully pelleted difficult materials in the past with great results- which i personally get satisfaction out of even if we will never mass produce it

When those nice shiny glossy pellets start poppin out I still do a little mental fist pump in my mind lol.

When I read that the temp could not be over 100degrees I lost interest. We've successfully made other pelleted products using liquid N to cool our dies (even a flat die can be cooled with N) The process youre explaining to me is similar to other materials found in a specific pelleted fish food were familiar with. Thank you for letting me know hops are similar in nature.

Theres many many trade secrets in pelleting as anyone that does this for a living knows its an art.

My intent on my post was to let people know its not as easy as it sounds and that they would likely be very upset forking out a few $K for a cheap mill only to realize what they are trying to do is much much more involving.

Although i cant get into all the info on how to make a pellet i urge anyone considering the purchase of a mill to understand theres much more to it than anything youll see on youtube. Theres usually work involved in prepping the material for pelleting..

When they show "this machine pellets 1000lbs/hr" they are pelleting usually a very easy specific recipe thats already been reduced to size and has a forgiving moisture content. You get that same machine home and decide to throw some wood or grass in it (or hops) you have no idea what youre in for.

When i heard some of these posts about mills and the process i had to chime in ... hopefully save some poor guy some money if he got a wild hair to buy a mill - its not as easy as it looks.

 

[GVH_Dan]

@GVH Dan

Theres many many trade secrets in pelleting as anyone that does this for a living knows its an art.

Amen to the "ART" part.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to hear anyone else's success stories. Heck, failure stories are great, too. They teach you what not to do.

Amen to the lb/hr also. Even with all the improvements we have made, our 1,000 lb/hr machine typically runs at 1/4 of that to get the quality we want. I know another guy who had a flat die that he got to work...but he only got out 5 to 10 lb/hr and had to do it out on his porch, at night, when it was less than 10F outside. Image doing just a single acre (1000 to 2000 lb) that way.

 

[GVH_Dan]

Actually even older than this thread is a DIY thread where someone made a simple pelletizer IIRC using a bullet casing and a dowel.

What size casing? I've got a bunch of 44's. Mount a bunch of them on a board so you can sweep the mill powder in and it could become fairly efficient.

How did he get them out once they were compressed?

 

[B-Hoppy]

Just pull the trigger ~ Ha!

 

[odinsgift]

The HopMonster(?) Mill I saw at HopUnion, I was told how delicate of a line in the pelletizing temperature was. .01 degree difference either way from the optimal temperature would be either a fire hazard, a hazard to the machinery, or a hazard to the hop, said the mill manager. I was able to grab some Cluster hops fresh out of the pelletizer, they were nearly too hot to touch, far over 95F, it felt like to me, and after, we visited the farms, and the kilns, where we were told the essential oils begin to degrade over 100F. The large places that test/process hops, deal with STRICTLY baled hops, but I am not 100% sure if they are shredded beforehand, or not.

 

[GVH_Dan]

Interesting...I'm not sure that we saw a .01 degree range but it wasn't huge.

The 100F mark is partially based on preserving oils, aromas, etc....our entire drying process stays below 90F...but we also saw the pellets turn into glossy little crayons much above that. These "crayons" just wouldn't break down fast enough for the brewers. Likewise, we could get them too cold where the pellets didn't hang together but that is more often due to excess moisture in the cones before they are pelletized.

 

[eformo]

Any update on the process of pelletizing since 2012? How is everyone doing it today?

 

[GVH_Dan]

On the homebrewer scale...I can't say any progress has been made.

On the small scale grower scale...there are a number of companies/organizations that are currently marketing flat die systems that are turnkey ready to produce pellets. Some love them and some don't. Personally, we just sold our ring die mill to get a bigger one. We had the old one in the hundreds of pounds/hr but we wanted to break the thousand/hour barrier.

The big issue is availability. Last I heard there was 8 or more pelletizing facilities in NY, where they only need 3 or so. MI and CO may not have enough. MN and Nebraska are bringing their first ones on line last fall or this fall. Slowly but surely, the pelletizing barrier is being taken care of in each region for the small scale growers.