dry hopping

liaml1974

Dry hopping film
Hi, I've just got round to using hops with a all malt canadian blonde. I just dropped the pellets in out of the tea bag to the fermenter after 6 days. Now there is a green film on top of the brew.
Will this sink to the bottom? I have a fermenter with tap on it,will this stuff get in my bottles?
How long will I leave it before it settles and I bottle? I won't be putting it in secondary bottling bucket?
Thanks

Hingo

liaml1974 wrote: »

Dry hopping film
Hi, I've just got round to using hops with a all malt canadian blonde. I just dropped the pellets in out of the tea bag to the fermenter after 6 days. Now there is a green film on top of the brew.
Will this sink to the bottom? I have a fermenter with tap on it,will this stuff get in my bottles?
How long will I leave it before it settles and I bottle? I won't be putting it in secondary bottling bucket?
Thanks

I'd use a bottling bucket, If you have a syphon, stick one end down the bottom of the fermenter (without disturbing the yeast cake if there's any) and syphon it into your bottling bucket.

If your saying you're not goin to use a bottling bucket then you could bottle from a syphon or chance your arm with the tap, once the top layer of hops drops to the tap hole, leave it at that (use the book / tilt bucket trick to get more beer)

With the pellets and dry hopping, you don't really want to leave dry hopping going on any more than a week. Leaf hops will get away with longer but pellets will start to bring unwanted results if left too long

liaml1974

ok, will bottle after 4 days or so. thanks

ian_m

I've encountered a similar scenario. I just chucked the pellets into the fermenter because I didn't have a bag and I wanted to see for myself if they sank or swam.

Most of the hops sank in my case but they will sink around your tap. Tie some cheese cloth or similar around your wand/tap/tubing/syphon when you are bottling. If some hops get stuck in the tap you will have to stick your finger into the back of the tap to plumb the hops out.

They were soaking in there for seven days if I remember correctly. Worked out fine in the end and I was happy with the result and I put plenty of hops in there.

sharingan

Hingo wrote: »

With the pellets and dry hopping, you don't really want to leave dry hopping going on any more than a week. Leaf hops will get away with longer but pellets will start to bring unwanted results if left too long

Leaf hops run the risk of infecting your brew if you dry hop with them. Make hop teas instead with leaf hops.

neoanto

Sharigan, why do you say that leafy hopes increase the risk of infection?
I'm asking, because this actually happened to me!
I dry hopped with whole leaf hops and got an infection in my beer.
That said, it could well have been bacteria on my hands or in the air that got into the fermenter.

mayto

sharingan wrote: »

Leaf hops run the risk of infecting your brew if you dry hop with them. Make hop teas instead with leaf hops.

I never had a problem dry hopping with leaf hops, I just put them in a sanitsed muslin bag and put them in the fermenter. Hops are generally regarded as being anti bacterial so I treat them as being sanitary when dry hopping with them .

willabur

I would have thought that it is very unusual to get an infection from hops seeing as they are natural antiseptic.

I dry hop with pellets at the moment, I use a muslin bag to keep them seperate from the beer. but having dry hopped before without muslin i created a filter of sorts by wrapping the end of the syphon in muslin. I ended up with a little bit of hop matter in the final product but honestly it was the best beer I have brewed so far so I wouldn't worry too much about it

Hingo

Very hard for bacteria to form on hops, if it was then it would matter if it was leaf or pellet.

Hop resins are composed of two main acids: alpha and beta acids. Alpha acids have a mild antibiotic/bacteriostatic effect against Gram-positive bacteria, and favor the exclusive activity of brewing yeast in the fermentation of beer. Alpha acids such as isohumulone are responsible for the bitter flavor in the beer.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hops#Brewing

I have a tried and trusted routine of just letting go loose in the FV, haven't had any issues to date (I say this now and am due to bottle a Punk clone later - after saying this I may be eating my own words if I've jinxed it!).

The only qualm I have with leaf hops is that they're thirsty feckers! worth it though as I usually have little trouble racking once the filter on the Auto-Syphon on.

sharingan

mayto wrote: »

I never had a problem dry hopping with leaf hops, I just put them in a sanitsed muslin bag and put them in the fermenter. Hops are generally regarded as being anti bacterial so I treat them as being sanitary when dry hopping with them .

They are antiseptic to a point. As the oils degrade over time they become less so. In industry where you use fresh hops all the time, you can dry hop with leaf hops I suspect. But in homebrewing where hops are continually exposed to air for long periods, dry hopping with leaf becomes a risk.

The pellet extrusion process is an additional sanitisation process. By concentrating the hop matter so densely they ensure an even spread of antibacterial hops, unlike leaf, where those oils can vary in concentration (i.e. leaf edge or stem matter).

The true test of infection is whether your bottles will gush or not after 6 months. I am finding that beer that tasted fine after conditioning is now starting to gush a lot after a few months storage. I tend to be a lot more cautious at bottling time now.

oblivious

sharingan wrote: »

They are antiseptic to a point. .

Hop alpha acids have no effect upon gram negative bacteria (E. coli, Salmonella etc), the nasty enteric bacteria but luckily for us alcohol and low pH do


And of course as as yeast family member Brettanomyces

adamski8

Ive dry hopped 4 times now with leaf hops and 2 times ive noticed a white scum develop and last weekend this greenish blobs on the surface especially on the muslin bag. This time i had even put th bag into boiling water for 5min before adding to the fermenter. Rarely had a problem with infection when not dry hopping.

liaml1974

Thanks lads
Got a muslin sheet , I'll strain through that.

jonziepoo

sharingan wrote: »

They are antiseptic to a point. As the oils degrade over time they become less so. In industry where you use fresh hops all the time, you can dry hop with leaf hops I suspect. But in homebrewing where hops are continually exposed to air for long periods, dry hopping with leaf becomes a risk.

The pellet extrusion process is an additional sanitisation process. By concentrating the hop matter so densely they ensure an even spread of antibacterial hops, unlike leaf, where those oils can vary in concentration (i.e. leaf edge or stem matter).

The true test of infection is whether your bottles will gush or not after 6 months. I am finding that beer that tasted fine after conditioning is now starting to gush a lot after a few months storage. I tend to be a lot more cautious at bottling time now.

I agree completely

neoanto

adamski8 wrote: »

Ive dry hopped 4 times now with leaf hops and 2 times ive noticed a white scum develop and last weekend this greenish blobs on the surface especially on the muslin bag. This time i had even put th bag into boiling water for 5min before adding to the fermenter. Rarely had a problem with infection when not dry hopping.

This sounds exactly like my issue.
I think they guys might be right in saying leafy hops could be the problem, specifically older hops.
My experience turned me off dry hopping altogether, but maybe i will try in future with pellets.

oblivious

neoanto wrote: »

This sounds exactly like my issue.
I think they guys might be right in saying leafy hops could be the problem, specifically older hops.
My experience turned me off dry hopping altogether, but maybe i will try in future with pellets.

Is the bag weight down, you don't want it floating on the surface?

neoanto

The time when i tried the dry hopping, i just chucked in the the whole leaf loose, so they floated on the surface.
Then the white scum came along!