Oxygen exposure during dry hopping

[eric19312]

I'm doing 2 dry hop additions. One in primary and second in keg. I try to do the primary dry hop while I still have 5 points of gravity or so to scrub any O2 introduced during the addition. Sometimes my work schedule does not permit and I dry hop at final gravity. I'll add a bit of boiled sugar water when that happens. I cold crash in the primary, sealing it first to prevent oxygen from getting in during cold crashing.

The keg hops go in after I fill the keg. I purge the keg by pushing out star san with CO2. Then fill with closed transfer. Then open keg and drop in my hops, loose. I'm using the clear beer draft system with the screen so no need to worry about bags. When all my clear beer systems are in use I use a stainless tea ball but that limits the dry hop quantity I can use.

After closing the keg back up I seat the lid with 30 PSI and give it about 5 purges then hook up to either high pressure CO2 for beer tomorrow or serving pressure CO2 for beer in a week or 10 days.

I believe the open lid dry hopping is safer than it sounds. Because I cold crash pretty soon after primary fermentation my beer goes into the keg with a fair amount of naturally produced CO2 dissolved. The dry pellet hops create many nucleation sites which cause some of this dissolved CO2 to come out of suspension. So when I purge I am purging with new CO2 in the head space and released CO2 from the beer. Anyway it seems to work well and my hop character is lasting just fine.

 

[Taket_al_Tauro]

Since you reactivated this thread I'll take the chance to share my experience with this simple measure of adding a bit of sugar solution together with the dry hops... I was convinced of giving it a go after stumbling upon this thread.
So, my concern that this would bring substantial amounts of yeast back into suspension proved indeed to be unfounded, since I did not end up with more yeast sediment in the bottles than usual. AND I did not cold-crash either.

So this did not have any negative impact, for sure. Now to tell whether it had a positive effect, is much more difficult, since I was messing with several other variables in that IPA: fist time use of SO4, more late hops, hop variety I never used before (Mosaic), and finally, I tried my best to purge O2 out of the bottle headspaces at bottling. Now this last measure did have a noticeable impact (see full report here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/...dspace-o2-in-a-bottle-conditioned-ipa.653798/

if you are interested in the details of that small experiment).

Anyway, that particular beer was by far the best IPA I had made until now, and I am pretty convinced it was a result of most if not all those little improvements I mentioned above.

 

[Jag75]

How about just opening the top , pouring in the hops then purge with Co2 .

 

[Taket_al_Tauro]

How about just opening the top , pouring in the hops then purge with Co2 .

I think this sugar-method could still be useful for people who (like me) do not have access to CO2 and still rely on the good old bottle conditioning process. Of course with a kegging setup you can easily purge everything, do closed transfers and all this cool stuff (which I hope I’ll be able to do as well someday).

But for the bottle-conditioning folks, based on what I read and my still relatively limited experience, I got the feeling that keeping our yeasties active and happy is the best we can do to minimize oxidation issues.

 

[Jag75]

I think this sugar-method could still be useful for people who (like me) do not have access to CO2 and still rely on the good old bottle conditioning process. Of course with a kegging setup you can easily purge everything, do closed transfers and all this cool stuff (which I hope I’ll be able to do as well someday).

But for the bottle-conditioning folks, based on what I read and my still relatively limited experience, I got the feeling that keeping our yeasties active and happy is the best we can do to minimize oxidation issues.

Yes that's true for sure . One inexpensive way to purge your bottles is with a sodastream. I saw a couple videos on you tube , pretty smart idea. Sometimes I bottle and will get one of these gadgets to purge my bottles as I'm filling. You could also purge head space of a fermenter with it as well. It's cheaper at first but the tanks aren't very big. Long run it's cheaper to get a co2 tank and go from there. Hopefully soon you will get the set up you want . I just splurged and got another tank (beer blend) for my stouts . Pricey but man it makes the beer that much better .

 

[Taket_al_Tauro]

Yes that's true for sure . One inexpensive way to purge your bottles is with a sodastream. I saw a couple videos on you tube , pretty smart idea. Sometimes I bottle and will get one of these gadgets to purge my bottles as I'm filling. You could also purge head space of a fermenter with it as well. It's cheaper at first but the tanks aren't very big. Long run it's cheaper to get a co2 tank and go from there. Hopefully soon you will get the set up you want . I just splurged and got another tank (beer blend) for my stouts . Pricey but man it makes the beer that much better .

Ok thanks for the tipp. I'll look into that sodastream method. I do have one of these already!
The idea just never crossed my mind seriously because I couldn't imagine a practical way of using
this gadget in such a context. But I'd better have a look at those youtube videos then.
For now I experimented with this wine-preservation gas (Brand "Private preserve"), especially to purge the bottle headspeces after filling. I found out that to be the single major culprit of oxidation in my bottle conditioned hoppy beers.
Purging with Private Preserve works really well for that. You really don't need much gas just for the bottle headspace.
But for sure, it is still quite pricey on the long run.

Anyway, hopefully a kegging setup someday!

 

[TheHairyHop]

As an unintentional benefit, krausening/speisse/sugar additions have been nice for me with regards to saving CO2. I haven't had to fill my tank in months now that I only use it for transferring and serving

 

[xCSx]

I recently did a double dry hop and my beer was that nice Haze going into the keg. Now it's a light brown and probably oxidized.