This is my first time dry hopping in my Conical. I’m dry hopping cold at about 40°. I dropped the hops in with a hop dropper purging the hop dropper with CO2 multiple times before dropping them in. At first a decent amount of hops settled to the bottom and I could see them in the bottom site glass, and it looked like a hop slurry. Today it has progressed to having some slurry beer on the bottom of the side glass, then what looks like some type of air/gas, then more solid, hot material in the site glass top. I’ve attached some pictures. Prior to dropping the Hops, I had dumped all of the yeast completely. Wondering if this gas is CO2 from a little hop creep, or if it could be air/oxygen from what was inside the hot pellets and now I’ve oxidized my entire batch? I guess I will try to dump this before kegging, but I’m not sure it will dump out. Any opinions? Thanks.
Wouldn’t expect hop creep at 40F. To me, it seems there some dissolved co2 and the hops caused some nucleation. I doubt it’s a problem, more of a PITA. When the beer is dropped to near 32-33F, the co2 will go back into solution and it will settle down.
Pretty unlikely to be hop creep. Diacetyl (if you’re sure that’s what it is) can come from a number of sources.
Thanks. They settled out overnight and this morning it was just one column of hops without any gas in intermingled. So I guess all is good. Denny, I just tried to drop the hops and only about a third came out and they turned into a thick paste and nothing else would drop after five psi. So I’m just going to rack above them with the racking arm. Any tips on getting more of the hops out from the bottom port?
For me, about 1.3 will easily push the hops out the dump port, but I assume we’re using different equipment.
Yeah, couldn’t get mine out so I just rotated my racking arm above it and was able to keg clear beer. Thanks.
I have an SS Brewtech Conical that I dry hop in. As you did, I burp out all of the yeast through the dump port before dry hopping. I then just add the pellets through the top of the fermenter lid and use a triclover tee attached to the lid so that I can keep some CO2 moving through the tee (about 1 PSI or so) asl I dump in the pellets to discourage any oxygen pickup in the beer (yes it is a bit over engineered). After three days, I can easily push the hop slurry out through the dump port with a half inch tube attached to the dump port with a triclover clamp and use about 2-3 PSI of CO2 to push the hops out. It works well for me and I get no clogging in the tubing when pushing the hops out.