Wort losses with IPAs. Wow!

[isleofman]

Do you guys calculate for less hop utilization when using something like the hop spider? There is no way it can be the same as dropping hops straight into the kettle.

 

[looneybomber]

What are you doing that's causing problems when bottle-conditioning? I cold-crash all my beers with gelatin and, unless it's a long lager time or a high-ABV beer, I don't need to add more yeast to get it to carbonate within 3 weeks or so.

It's interesting to me that you're having trouble.

All of the above. I tend to brew beer over 1.080.
I brew about an 8:1 ratio of >1.080 beers to <1.080.
Not counting Mr.Beer beers, I've brewed more >1.110 OG beers than I have <1.060 OG beers.
If I go straight from primary to bottling, I don't have a problem carbing. If I secondary them, I've had issues mutliple times that resulted in me popping caps and dripping in some rehydrated EC1118 in order to get them to carb.

 

[JayDubWill]

Do you guys calculate for less hop utilization when using something like the hop spider? There is no way it can be the same as dropping hops straight into the kettle.

Interesting question but brewers have been using hop sacks for ages. The logical side of my brain says the utilization would be lower because of the reduced surface area of hops confined in a sack. But I haven't seen any calculators taking this into account, so I'm thinking the loss might be so negligible it doesn't matter or It could be the benefit of easily removing most of the hop sludge from the wort far outweighs a stuck transfer to primary and/or the loss of wort due to all the hop particles and break material, like in a IPA has...which gets us back on topic.

 

[looneybomber]

Do you guys calculate for less hop utilization when using something like the hop spider? There is no way it can be the same as dropping hops straight into the kettle.

To figure actual losses, you'd likely have to experiment because otherwise you're dealing with rates of change and solution concentrations. It might even be a first order differential equation? I'm good with math and physics, but chem100 is my limit.

 

[looneybomber]

Side note: I took a post ferment gravity reading. 1.022 using US05, so 77% apparent attenuation.

My goal was 1.090 OG, 1.012 FG
My actual was 1.096 OG, 1.022 FG.

I'm thinking I could boil some water with some hops and some sugar, let that cool and pour gently into the beer to start fermentation up again. That should keep my hops there, but lower the FG, right?

So I added .5gal of water with .75lbs of sugar.
I boiled
30min, 6g northern brewer
15min, 8g northern brewer
10min, 8g cascade.

It gave me a 1.076 gravity with 100'ish IBU's. This was dumped in on Wed or Thurs of last week. Took a gravity reading tonight and I am at 1.022, so all the sugar was eaten, but my gravity is not dropping below 1.022. Next time I will have to go AG and mash real low and long. Using LME just doesn't let it ferment dry enough.

 

[BetterSense]

I've been making IPAs with LME and sugar. I made my first all-grain IPA a couple weeks ago as a test of my new electric kettle, and I was worried the grain bill of 100% pale malt would come out with too much body and/on sweetness. I ended up messing up my volumes a bit, screwed up my temps a bit, and did a slightly thinner-than-usual BIAB mash for 90 minutes with temperatures varying from 68C down to 63C. It started at 1,075-ish and fermented down to 1.008...with one packet of S-04. So by mashing right I think you can get just as dry with all-grain, as you would by using LME+sugar.