I have an IIPA fermenting in 2 carboys and plan to dryhop them with a few oz each. I wasn’t sure if I should bag the pellet hops and throw them in the keg for the full 2 month aging/conditioning or wait 1.5 months for 2 weeks of dryhop? I don’t want to introduce anymore oxygen but I have also heard about grassy flavors from leaving hops in beer too long. Suggestions?
-J.K.L.
The best way I have found is to wait until 2 weeks before the keg goes into the kegerator. If you leave the hops in there for 2 months at room temp I think it’s going to impart some off flavors. Once cold I’ve left the hops in for a couple months without off flavors. I sanitize a women’s knee-high white stocking, throw the hops in and tie it off. Then into the keg and go through the normal ritual of eliminating O2 (put on CO2 & pull the relief valve a few times & then seal it up with ~20 lbs.). Cheers!!!
I do the same as Ham, except I tie a length of dental floss to the bag and the other end to the handle of my corny keg. If I taste it getting ‘grassy’ or ‘vegetal’, I pop open the keg, fish out the bag o’ hops, reseal, purge, etc. Dental floss is cheap and already sanitized. Plus, it supports farmers who are bringing up their dental floss crops! ;D
it pays for the feed for their little horses this big
I have not had good luck with pellet hops in a keg-- leaf hops, with their larger size, are more easily kept out of the works.
If you want to use pellets definitely use a NYLON not muslin bag.
I have 2 kegs in tap right now with pellets in muslin bags. They’re not giving me any problems.
I think it depends on your threshold for hop aroma/flavor.
I would start with 7 days and sample the beer. If it needs more then let them sit for another 7 days and sample again…and so on. When you get to the level you like then remove them.
Some folks leave them in for the duration of the keg, but keep in mind that there can be an aquired “vegetal taste” imparted by the hops over time, depending on the quantity of hops and level of exposure to the beer.
As was already said, I also use a bag but I use muslin cloth for both whole and pellet hops. Dental floss works well for retrieval.
In my opinion, you can leave the beer on dry hops for an extended period of time, but only if you keep the beer cold. I start out my keg hopping for 5 days at room temp (gently rolling the keg 1-2 times a day) to get most of the hop oil into solution, then leave it cold until it is empty.
Denny,
When you are done with the keg, Is there anything left in the muslin? I would think you would have some/most/all of the pellet material in the beer rather than in the sack. Do you get a lot of hop floaters?
No more floaters than with whole hops. There’s definitely stuff left in the bag.
I use a stainless steel tea ball… but the dental floss is a good idea… I hadn’t thought about that… I take it its the non flavored kind?
Temperature is a key factor IMHO. I noticed my dry hop procedure, dry hopping 7-10 days in the low 60s, was not producing the results I wanted and then I started dry hopping at 68-70 degrees and this made a big difference.