Pressure on dry hops

[ecmik]

I dry hopped an IPA today and the beer is fermented in a unitank - first time for me. When using buckets, the dry hops stays at the surface and sinks to the bottom when cold crashing.

But this time I tried to put a little head pressure on the beer directly after adding the dry hops. The hops seemed to have sunk to the bottom instantly, leaving me wondering if this is to be expected, and if all of you that dry hop under pressure experience the same? Is this going to be an issue, getting hop aromas out of the dry hops now that they probably sits at the bottom?

 

[Vale71]

That's how it works in a pressurized vessel, where there will be little to no release of CO2 even when dropping hops in.

As for extraction the hop material will sediment at different rates with the largest particles dropping faster than the smallest. That's fortunate as the largest particles are made up of vegetable matter whereas lupulin glands will take the longest to drop and will have more time to release their "goodness" into the beer.

 

[eric19312]

I've had issue with dry hop pellets dropping very fast in unitank and ending up reaching the plumbing below the cone before swelling. They formed a slug of solid hop material I was unable to dump. Opened butterfly valve all the way and could and could see plug of hops sitting in the valve (with 16+ gallons of beer on top of them plus 14psi head pressure and could see fully intact pellets mixed in with swelled partially disintegrated pellets.

To counter this issue I started using a blast of CO2 at the bottom valve after dry hopping before the plug could form and I follow that up a few hours later and rouse them again. Happy with the results but always looking for ways to improve.

Currently I am trying to use a yeast brink to purge the hops with CO2 and then get them saturated with beer and turned into beer hop slurry before pushing into the tank. Mixed results so far it's a work in progress.

 

[ecmik]

Ah, sounds like I may be having the same issue as you then.. I can't dream that the hops has extracted oils so fast. Probably they all are stuck at the bottom, unsolved or partly solved. That's really a shame! Kind of surprised I must say!

 

[eric19312]

Here is a link to my most recent video of rousing the hops. Eventually I’ll probably get rid of the sight glass but for now I do like to be able to see what is going on in that plumbing below the cone.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...ations-and-best-practices.645440/post-8954926