Pliny Double Dry-Hop - Should the hop additions look like this???

[J2W2]

Hi,

I'm brewing a Pliny the Elder Double Dry-Hopped for the first time. It calls for a seven-ounce pellet hop addition in the primary on day one, and a three-ounce addition on day six.

When I added the first addition on day one, it was during high krausen, so I dumped the hops on top of the foam. I just added the second addition, and as you can see by the picture, I have a layer of hops across the entire top of the fermenter, and the new hops are just laying on top of the older hops.

Is this normal? Will the new addition eventually merge with the other hops, or do I need to (gently) stir them in or something? This is the first time I've added hops, or anything else, to the primary, so I'm not sure what to expect. For some reason I assumed the loose hops would eventually sink to the bottom.

Thank you very much for your help!

 

[bobeer]

If they still look like that I'd get a sanitized spoon and carefully submerge the hops on top. I wouldn't stir term in. I'd just submerge them and they should fall apart and get into the beer.

I know a lot of brewers are really careful about oxidation with these super hoppy beers but I'm not sure if it can be helped here to expose it to a little oxygen to get those hops in the beer. Maybe someone will chime in with a better idea.

Maybe in the future, with the big dryhopped beers, you could put the hops in a muslin bag and weigh it down with marbles or fish tank rocks. Just make sure you get a big bag so the hops have room to expand.

 

[J2W2]

If they still look like that I'd get a sanitized spoon and carefully submerge the hops on top. I wouldn't stir term in. I'd just submerge them and they should fall apart and get into the beer.

I know a lot of brewers are really careful about oxidation with these super hoppy beers but I'm not sure if it can be helped here to expose it to a little oxygen to get those hops in the beer. Maybe someone will chime in with a better idea.

Maybe in the future, with the big dryhopped beers, you could put the hops in a muslin bag and weigh it down with marbles or fish tank rocks. Just make sure you get a big bag so the hops have room to expand.

I checked on them yesterday. They were more "smoothed" out, but I'd already sanitized a spoon, so I gently pressed them down a little.

I debated on bagging / not bagging, and ended up tossing them in loose. I'll know in a week or so how wise that was when I rack it to secondary. I just pulled a small sample today, because my Tilt is all messed up in this one, and it was a nice hoppy sludge. My fermenter has a conical bottom and rotating racking arm, which is pointed slightly down right now. I'm hoping I can get something clearer than that in the secondary!

The sample was so cloudy it was hard to read on my refractometer, but I ballparked it around 9. The original Brix was 18.4, which would mean it's getting pretty close to FG, if the reading is good. CO2 output has definitely slowed dramatically. It kind of surprises me since my previous (non-double dry-hopped) batches took a good two weeks to finish. I'm going to let the temp slowly rise to ambient (69 degrees) and I'll continue to pull samples.

 

[hotbeer]

What are they in? If that is a carboy I'm looking at with amazingly clean and optically correct glass between the camera and the subject, then just swirl it till it gets mixed in. Then you don't have to add any more air into the headspace than is already there. Same with a bucket too if you have a way to tell when it's all mixed into the beer without having to open the lid.

Is this a five gallon batch? Those pellets look huge compared to the size of the fermenter.

 

[J2W2]

What are they in? If that is a carboy I'm looking at with amazingly clean and optically correct glass between the camera and the subject, then just swirl it till it gets mixed in. Then you don't have to add any more air into the headspace than is already there. Same with a bucket too if you have a way to tell when it's all mixed into the beer without having to open the lid.

Is this a five gallon batch? Those pellets look huge compared to the size of the fermenter.

It's a SS Brew Tech Brew Bucket (7 gallon), so yes, it's a five gallon batch.

They are just normal size hop pellets. I had my phone fairly close when I took the picture, so it may have made things look out of proportion.