Whirlpool hops?

[jimdeasy]

I need a description of what it means when a brewery making hazy and hoppy beers say they whirlpool at 150 for 40 minutes?

Do you shut off the heat, turn on the chiller for a little to drop temp and then turn off the chiller and start the whirlpool then? Adding hops?

There’s another idea with whirlpool where you just cut off the burner drop in 0 min knockout hops and spin the wort with the sole purpose being to pile the trub and clear the draw off.
I’m can’t find a good description anywhere whirlpool hops vs whirlpool for cleanup. Anyone?

 

[day_trippr]

There are "flame out" additions, which fits your last thought. Added literally at the end of the boil with the heat then immediately turned off, they add IBUs until the temperature drops below ~180°F.

Then there are "whirlpool" additions, where the wort is first brought (or allowed to drift) down below 180°F first, then held there for the prescribed duration, before chilling to pitching temperature. The intent is to extract maximum character with minimal IBU contribution.

Those are the models I follow. For my WP hops I hold at 170°F for the 20-30 minute duration before chilling to pitching temp. The hold temperature likely affects what volatile fractions are preserved vs extracted...

Cheers!

 

[jimdeasy]

Thank you! I feel like this topic gets confusing. This note helps. I’m eager to keep trying this technique out. I’ve had a whirlpool immersion chiller for a while now and used it incorrectly, thinking it was whirlpooling only to drop the temp faster. Mine drops from a full boil to 170 in 2 minutes! Gotta be ready to get on it at flameout. I was on the right track but missed the temp last brew landed at 130 and had to reheat back up to 140 and got nervous held it there for 30 min. Unfortunately I had a microscopic pin hole in the pump tube which caused a foaming effect. This pulled all the hop oil into foam and then began to rise up out of the kettle like a meringue! Craziest brew day ever. Brought me to this forum.

 

[IslandLizard]

[...] when a brewery making hazy and hoppy beers say they whirlpool at 150 for 40 minutes?

Do you shut off the heat, turn on the chiller for a little to drop temp and then turn off the chiller and start the whirlpool then? Adding hops?

Yes, that's the technique homebrewers use!
In reality there are some heat losses during whirlpooling, so you may need to add a little heat now and then during the 30-40' whirlpool to keep temps at or around 140F. Others just let it slide down.

I usually do 2 whirlpool hop additions. First at 170F for 10-15' then drop to 150F to do a 2nd addition, which is whirlpooled for 30-40', before chilling down to ferm temps.
I'm adding a little heat (electric) to keep those lower temps from dropping, usually around 500-800W, indoors.

 

[Vale71]

I need a description of what it means when a brewery making hazy and hoppy beers say they whirlpool at 150 for 40 minutes?

In a comemercial setup it means you would run the wort through the chiller as you transfer from boil kettle to whirlpool tun and set 150°F as the target temperature. As the transfer is complete you'd add the whirlpool hops to the whirlpool tun and let it sit for the prescribed time before transferring to the fermentation vessel while chilling to final pitching temp.

Standard process would be to transfer to whirlpool tun without chilling and then chilling in a single pass going from whirlpool to FV.

With homebrew equipment you'd have to be a bit more creative to implement a similar process depending on available equipment. You've already been given some good pointers by other posters.

 

[jimdeasy]

Interesting! I’ve done a few walkthroughs on smaller commercial breweries, magnolia, trumer, faction..it’s always a 3 vessel brew house. HL, MT, BK to ferm. I’ve never seen a dedicated whirlpool tank. But all my tours were pre Hazy takeover, is that a new thing? I appreciate all the advice and comments from the thread, great insights all around!

 

[day_trippr]

I would say at least half of the craft breweries I've toured had a separate whirlpooling vessel - but if I recall back to the days before the IBU wars (and definitely years before the current Hazy rage) correctly, they were originally used to assist lautering and chilling, and would drop a lot of stuff that would end up in a conical...

Cheers!

 

[couchsending]

Chilling to lower whirlpooling temps is actually not that easy for a lot of small craft breweries. It’s much easier for homebrewers. Most craft breweries are operating smaller systems without dedicated WP tanks and often times are using direct fire kettles. If you don’t have a dedicated WP vessel you would have to run wort through a heat exchanger and back into the kettle to get to lower temps. This is really inefficient especially with a direct fire kettle and if you used any hops in the boil the heat exchanger would most likely clog. A lot of breweries were either not adding any hop matter to the boil (either using extracts or just no hops) or brewing high gravity worts and diluting with cold water to get to lower temps.

Even if you have a dedicated WP vessel you still would run into issue when trying to cool wort using a traditional heat exchanger. The last few years most small brewhouse manufacturers have started offering shell and tube heat exchangers which allows for hopped wort to be cooled without worrying about clogging the traditional heat exchanger design. Even then it would take a really long time to cool a large batch of wort from 212 to 150. Pretty sure most places aren’t going much below 180 but who knows.

Then there’s the whole debate about whether it’s even worth it or not. Yes some oils might be preserved but will these oils even make it through fermentation and would dry hopping be a much more effective way to get these oils into the beer anyways. There‘s lots of data out there that says thiols might be a larger contributor to the aroma of hopped beer. One of the most important Thiols, 3MH actually increases the longer it’s boiled. There’s plenty of breweries making highly hopped hazy beers that aren’t even adding any hops other than extracts on the hotside at all. Latest “Juice Project” beers from Tree House are made this way and it’s pretty much what Trillium has been doing for their Street beers for a while now.

 

[Vale71]

Right, forgot to mention that to do that use of CO2 extract only for bittering is a must.

 

[Dland]

I need a description of what it means when a brewery making hazy and hoppy beers say they whirlpool at 150 for 40 minutes?

Do you shut off the heat, turn on the chiller for a little to drop temp and then turn off the chiller and start the whirlpool then? Adding hops?

There’s another idea with whirlpool where you just cut off the burner drop in 0 min knockout hops and spin the wort with the sole purpose being to pile the trub and clear the draw off.
I’m can’t find a good description anywhere whirlpool hops vs whirlpool for cleanup. Anyone?

I drop wort temp to around 160F w immersion coil in BK, take coil out, whirlpool breifly to center trub. Then gravity feed wort to hop vessel, which is just my mash tun w grist rinsed out. I use leaf hops in a SS spider for this step to keep wort clear and hops out of plate cooler, tube from BK draining wort though the hops in the spider. After desired interval, wort is pumped to fermentor via plate cooler.

 

[JAReeves]

I drop wort temp to around 160F w immersion coil in BK, take coil out, whirlpool breifly to center trub. Then gravity feed wort to hop vessel, which is just my mash tun w grist rinsed out. I use leaf hops in a SS spider for this step to keep wort clear and hops out of plate cooler, tube from BK draining wort though the hops in the spider. After desired interval, wort is pumped to fermentor via plate cooler.

This sounds like a fascinating method. Do you have problems with hot-side oxygen pickup (I have heard different arguments on this)? Is this negligible as long as you minimize splashing, etc? How is the hop flavor? I love bitter IPA's, but I want them to have a fresh hop burst flavor as well, and I am struggling a little with the aroma side of my IPA's.

 

[Dland]

Don't know about hot side O2 pickup. If I'm fresh pitching, Fermentis dry yeast, I do not oxygenate. If pumping wort on yeast cake into sealed fermentor, I hit wort with some O2 on way down.

Hop flavor is very good. One can get significant variation in hop flavor results with different wort temps for hop step. For instance, a 155F hop step will be different than a 170F one. Both can be quite good, depending on what you are trying to achieve, flavor wise. For aroma, the lower temp is probably better.