Hello all,
Brewing novice here; been doing it for only about 6 months, so still working on figuring this whole thing out. My question is about using a filter after dry hopping, but first: a quick story.
I recently brewed a sour. It fermented in a 6-gallon glass carboy. After 1 week, I put frozen raspberries in my 5-gallon carboy and transferred half of my beer from the 6-gallon into the 5-gallon. I put frozen blueberries in the half that remained in the 6-gallon. Goal was to make half the batch a blueberry sour and half the batch a raspberry sour. Anyway, when it came time to bottle, I lined the inside of my bottling bucket with a nylon mesh bag that had been boiled and sanitized. After I finished transferring each brew separately into the bottling bucket, I just lifted out the mesh bag, removing all the seeds and fruit bits. I was pretty confident that there were no bits of stuff left in the bucket.
I’d like to brew a heavily-hopped IPA or DIPA next, and I’m wondering if that same method would work for filtering out the hop material left over in the carboy after dry-hopping? I’ve read it’s better to have the dry hops freely floating rather than confined to a bag in the fermenter. Can I have the hops freely floating, then when it’s time to bottle, transfer my beer from the fermenter into the the bottling bucket lined with the nylon bag, then just lift that out prior to bottling?
I’ve read lots of different opinions about ways to keep hop material from getting into the final product, but hadn’t come across this method yet. Maybe I’ve just missed it, or maybe it’s a bad idea for some reason.
Thanks!
It’s really difficult to filter anything post fermentation without professional equipment. Talking about lining a bottling bucket isn’t the worst idea though. That said, it may introduce more oxidation at bottling since the bag would seem to hold some o2 due to the porous nature – and you want to minimize o2 pick up at package as much as possible.
For dry hops, I just add hop pellets directly to the primary fermenter and let them settle out to the bottom and rack off when done. If using whole hops I bag them or put them in a keg with a “sure screen” on the bottom of the dip tube (which works for whole hops not so much for pellets).
For fruit I like to puree as fine as possible and let the fermentation finish and then let all the detritus settle out to the bottom and rack off that. It will likely be dusty and some will probably get picked up during transfer.
This strikes me as a pretty good idea. Yes, the bag might be a vector for O2, but you’re already exposing the beer to a lot of O2 if you are transferring it from the fermenter to an open (and I assume unpurged?) bucket. I doubt the bag would subject the beer to additional O2 over and above what’s already in the air in the bucket.
You could also/instead cold crash for a few days before bottling. Cold crashing does a remarkable job at settling all the pellet particulates. (You should try to mitigate suck-back from an airlock, though.) Then transfer and bottle as you normally do. There will be enough yeast left to carb when the bottles warm up.
If you use a siphon starter to transfer, you can also wrap a mesh bag around the lower half of it when you insert it into the fermenter.
i tried putting my dry hops in a bag once, they swell HUGELY, puffing up the bag so its tight and there was virtually no dry-hop character. never did it again, and i’ve had some really decently clear enough beers lately even with dry hops. i would just add them unless youre hyper concerned about clarity.
Thanks, all!
When I’ve dry-hopped before, I think I was so desperate to retain volume that I probably transferred too much hop gunk into the bottling bucket. Some of it definitely made its way into my beer.
If it’s true that the hops like to float freely in the fermenter rather than being constrained by a bag, then filtering through a nylon mesh either on the fermenter side (like over the wand) or on the bucket side seems like it would do the trick.
Hop pellets sink … they don’t float. And most of us feel they are actually higher quality and much easier to use that whole hops. For me, there is no special treatment. Just dump the hops into the fermenter, rack off when they drop out after a couple of days. Easy! No need to over think that.
I’ve never observed pellet dry hops sink, at least at first. Mine always float and form a thick, green cap on the beer. I have to gently rock my fermenters once or twice a day to break apart the cap and mix the hops. But they float right back to the surface. It’s only after four or five days that they start to slowly sink on their own. (Of course, when I cold crash, they drop like a rock.)
I speculate that the floating is caused by nucleation and subsequent CO2 breakout from the hop particulates. A pro brewer I know thinks it’s due to a high oil content, which makes the particulates less dense than the beer. He also suggested that you’ll know you’ve gotten all the oils out of your dry hops when they sink.
Both of these explanations sound plausible, but who knows. Any other ideas?
Pellets don’t sink until you crash cool, at least in my experience, but when you do it they drop like a rock. I’ve been doing a lot of attempts at primary hopping and spunding lately, so I can tell you that mesh bags, stainless tubes, and racking cane covers all work… at various rates. It might take a while, but the beer will eventually come out. If you are trying to siphon, that could be an issue.
i wouldn’t worry about oxidation during transfer for pellets if you’re careful to purge with CO2. I’ve had much worse oxidation issues with dry hopping using whole hops.
Right, they do float at first, unless you do something like recirc them with a pump I guess. But they sink out eventually and there are things you can do to get them to sink faster --as was mentioned, cold crash. Another thing you can do is to gently rock the fermenter to break them up.
I’ve never given any thought to wether it is the oils or nucleation sites, all I know is I can usually get them to sink at home in 3 days.
Of course, commercially, it’s difficult to tell how fast they sink since they are usually in stainless conicals. But when I was brewing commercially a sure fire hell of a lot of them sank because I’d have to fight with them with the centrifuge via the racking arm after a few short days – sometimes as short as 2 or 3 depending on how they were handled.
I’m with major. They always sink for me. It could be down to the pellet manufacturer. I’ve observed that poorly made, hard pellets tend to take longer to sink than well made softer ones. Maybe coincidence, but look to see if yiur pellets are shiny on the outside. If so, they were processed at a higher temp and will likely be harder and take longer to sink.