Tea bag of aroma hop pellets right in the bottle?

[agrazela]

I can get the bitterness I want, I can get hop flavor I want...my bottle-conditioned IPA bugaboo is aroma.

I do dryhop, and have tried many ways, but it's not getting me to where I want to be. I have done hop-tea, and I find it does help a little--at least with certain hop varieties (IME).

I know about randalls and such, I know zero oxygen exposure is ideal, and I suspect that counter-pressure filling bottles from a previously purged keg with a gun--or, just kegging--would be better for aroma retention than than the ol' open-air bottling bucket/wand, but my setup is just not (yet) sophisticated enough for all that.

I have heard of putting whole cones right in the bottle:
http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/dryhopping-in-the-bottle.3443/
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/16386/46088/

But I'm betting it would be hard to get enough cones into a bottle to get that aroma without pouring leaves into your glass...not to mention I've given up on whole cone because: a) They take up too much freezer space, b) I've never gotten any from any brew store (local or online) that weren't cheesy-smelling--I suspect the breweries snatch up all the fresh good ones. I've seen people postulate putting straight pellets into the bottle, but I'm thinking a mess of hop pellet debris in your glass would also be quite unpleasant.

So then I remembered this start-up thing where you "tea-bag" right in your glass to supposedly turn a crap beer into gold:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...glass-cheap-cheerful-beer-refined-tipple.html

And I was thinking about these heat-sealable, fill-your-own tea bags my sister-in-law uses for concocting holistic remedies to her many ailments (real or imagined):
http://www.specialteacompany.com/Empty-Tea-Bags

And thinking, has anyone ever tried making small tea-bags of hop pellets (or crushed pellets), and adding those to the bottle at bottling time? Basically "keg hop" in the bottle?

I guess I'd have to make a tool to extract the tea bag after the bottle is empty, but I don't see that as a big deal--probably easier than ensuring that every last leaf of a hop cone gets rinsed out. But would this create other issues, like a nucleation point for gushing when opening the carbed bottle? Is the amount of hop pellet (dust) you'd need per bottle--I'm thinking like, 0.5g to 2.0g per 12oz bottle--going to cause grassiness/vegetable flavors over the course of being in contact with the beer for weeks?

Unless someone's done this and can talk me out of it, I'd like to try. I think I'll call it "Hop Jammer IPA."

.

 

[day_trippr]

Go with God, but it sounds like a pita with a likely higher than comfortable infection potential.

As an easier alternative, may I suggest doubling or even tripling your dry hop bill and see if the result tickles your sensory fancies?

Cheers!

 

[Braufessor]

yep - my first thought would be:
a.) How much are you dry hopping with ( I regularly use 6 ounces in 2 different 3 ounce additions for dry hopping).
b.) Which hops are you dry hopping with?

Worries of putting hops in bottles?
1.) PITA
2.) Infection
3.) Nucleation points for carbonation causing gushers???

 

[agrazela]

In a 5-gallon batch of:
APA, I might use 2-4oz hopstand, 0-2oz in dryhop
IPA, typically 4-6oz hopstand, 2-4oz in dryhop
DIPA, upwards of 6-8oz hopstand, 4-6oz in dryhop

I have been most successful dry-hopping with the usual suspects: cascade, centennial, columbus, simcoe, amarillo. I mostly buy bulk-ish pellets (4oz or 1lb packs) from Yakima Valley hops or Farmhouse Brewing, and try to stick to most-recent crops, so I know the product quality is there. I vacuum-seal and freeze leftovers.

The hopstands I've been doing give me all the hoppy flavor I could want. And maybe it's fairer to say that I'm not getting lasting aroma; as in, yeah some of those IPA / DIPA batches have had great aroma at 2-3 weeks after bottling, decent at 4 or 5 weeks, but after that it has notably declined.

Yeah, I could certainly try dry-hopping even higher amounts. I have been tightening up my processes to get grain-to-glass faster, and to try to lose less aroma "to the air" or to oxidation (though there's surely more I could do). I could make smaller batches and drink them faster. Also I'm starting to experiment more with some of the newer "super-high oil" NZ/Aus varieties.

But I don't really want to turn this into a thread "about" dry-hopping, there's plenty of those already. This is mostly an idea about seeing if I can "trap" the hoppy goodness in the bottle instead of losing it out the airlock and the top of the bottling bucket, I guess modeled after the way folks trap it in kegs with a muslin bag.

So I guess I mostly just wanted to see if anyone's ever put teabags (whether containing hops, spices, whatever) in their bottles at bottling time, and what their experiences were, good and bad. C'mon, surely I'm not the first to have tried this, or at least to seriously think about doing this?

 

[Braufessor]

Sounds like what you are doing is good/normal. I hear what you are saying about wanting to capture that hop aroma in the bottle. Go ahead and try it - but, I would maybe just do a 6 or 12 pack of bottles the first time you do it - bottle the rest normal - just in case, you don't want to have 50 infected or gushing bottles. I would just put "x number of pellets" into each bottle and see what you get. Maybe put 1-2-3-4-5 pellets into 10 bottles. Do 2 bottles each with increasing # of hops and then compare them with the bottles you treat normally. I would go for it - but don't commit an entire batch to it right out of the gate. (And, maybe store those bottles in a bucket or something on the off chance you create bottle bombs.)

A couple other things - some of the hops you mentioned simply have less hop aroma to start with. I use citra/galaxy/mosaic a lot -they are hops that have more aroma to start with.

Another thought - you seem to indicate that your beer has great aroma at 4-5 weeks from the day you brew (2-3 weeks after bottling). And it goes down from there - Noticeably declining after the beer is 7 weeks old from brew day....... To be honest, that is just getting toward "older" for an IPA. I keg. My beers have a lot less hop aroma at week 5-6-7+(from brew day) too. To be honest, most of my IPA's are gone by week 4/5 from the day they are brewed.

 

[agrazela]

Maybe I'm just expecting too much. I know pro beers maintain hoppy aromas longer than that, but again I expect that's mostly about pro-level processes. Guess I will start making smaller batches and/or drink them faster. Probably also I'll stop cold-crashing hop bombs and just (re-)learn to live with more haze and sediment

I hear you on the higher-oil hop types. Just recently did an all-Galaxy pale with only 2oz in dry hop, and that was one of the more aromatic brews I've done. Kinda wish I'd used 4oz!

Mosaic I like, too. And Citra, but typically in combos--Citra kind of gets me the way the smell of cantelope does; a little whiff is nice, but too much elicits some kind of gag reflex.

Next time I get a hankering to make an IPA with hops I am already familiar with, I'll probably go ahead and do an experiment as you describe, with progressively more tea-bagged hops in bottles in the same batch.