Dry hopping techniques

Roger · April 28, 2014, 09:20:24 PM

I thought I'd start a post and get a little feed back with regards to dry hopping.
I've tried lately not using a hop bag in the carboy at all and just for lack of better terms "free hopping". Where I just let the hops float around freely and then filter them out at kegging time. This seems to be the best technique I've tried.
Attached you'll see a picture of the set up without any beer in the carboy of course. What I'm using is a carboy "cap" with a racking cane in one hole and an aquarium pump with a filter on the other to pressurize the empty space in the carboy forcing the beer up through the racking cane into the keg. But on the bottom of the racking cane I made kind of a SS wire basket with a hop sock attached. The result is beer completely free of hop debris and I can dry hop for as long as I see fit to. Without waiting a week or more for the hops to sink to the bottom.
I was listening to a pod cast where Jamil said he gets best results just adding hops directly to the keg without a bag and just deals with the odd hop particle. He just calls it roughage.

I'm not too keen on roughage in my beer so I thought I'd give this a try and results seem great so far.
What techniques do you guys use?

Chris Craig · April 28, 2014, 09:34:10 PM

That's pretty clever Roger.

Pellets do take a while to drop out at fermentation temps, but I tried cold crashing 1 day after dry hopping once, and the pellets dropped out in 24 hours. I've started doing this as a matter of procedure now. After 24 hours, I'll add gelatine to clear, then keg 3 days after that.

Roger · April 28, 2014, 09:42:16 PM

I've heard that the hop aroma extraction is not as good at low temps like cold crashing but more effective at fermentation temps. What has your experience been? I don't have much room to cold crash with a full fridge and carboys at different stages of fermentation. My cold crashing happens in the kegerator. I've never used gelatine either.

Chris Craig · April 28, 2014, 09:49:30 PM

My IPA in the competition was done this way. 24 hours at 18ºC with 3 oz, then down to 0ºC to crash, etc... I think that had a great aroma. I've not heard about the reduced "aroma extraction", but then again, I've never gone looking for the information either.

It would be an interesting experiment to try it both ways. I might try it next time I dry hop 10 gallons.

DandyMason · April 28, 2014, 10:15:23 PM

I was pretty impressed how well cold crashing dropped all my dry hops out.

I think a good experiment would be gelatin and no gelatin for a dry hopped IPA too

jamie_savoie · April 29, 2014, 09:28:31 AM

I've tried dry hopping for 3 days like the BS podcast and I didn't like it at all. The method I use for dry hoping is a nylon sock with marble. Probably free hoping for 3 days would've been better but I never try it so I don't know

For the last year, all my hoppy beer (> 50ibu) I've been keg hopping and I'm very happy with this and will stick with this method. I use a nylon bag with marbles, use a dental floss and string it to the handle of the keg so that the bag of hops is sitting almost at the bottom of the keg but not touching the bottom. I leave the bag there until I kick the keg and I never ever had a grassy or harsh taste, ever, even with 3-4oz of dry hopping. The hops stay in the keg for 2-3 months or more.

Roger · April 29, 2014, 10:13:09 AM

Part of the reason I tried "free Hopping" is the fact that I don't like trying to pull the hop sock out of my carboy through the small hole hopping it doesn't break. I guess I could have left the hop sock in until after racking but I liked pulling it through the hole as I did it would kind of squeeze out the hops and get more goodness out but it did make me nervous. One time I got the hop sock stuck into the hole just after dropping it into the beer it seemed to instantly foam up. What a huge mess! So I figure the "free hopping" then filtering/screening was the best way to get full contact and no debris.

Roger · April 29, 2014, 10:15:48 AM

Quote from: jamie_savoie on April 29, 2014, 09:28:31 AM
I've tried dry hopping for 3 days like the BS podcast and I didn't like it at all. The method I use for dry hoping is a nylon sock with marble. Probably free hoping for 3 days would've been better but I never try it so I don't know

For the last year, all my hoppy beer (> 50ibu) I've been keg hopping and I'm very happy with this and will stick with this method. I use a nylon bag with marbles, use a dental floss and string it to the handle of the keg so that the bag of hops is sitting almost at the bottom of the keg but not touching the bottom. I leave the bag there until I kick the keg and I never ever had a grassy or harsh taste, ever, even with 3-4oz of dry hopping. The hops stay in the keg for 2-3 months or more.

I'm glad to hear your having good results with long dry hop times. I'll try dry hopping right at the beginning of my secondary next time with one carboy and the other at the last couple days.

jamie_savoie · April 29, 2014, 10:47:31 AM

Quote from: Roger on April 29, 2014, 10:15:48 AM
I'm glad to hear your having good results with long dry hop times. I'll try dry hopping right at the beginning of my secondary next time with one carboy and the other at the last couple days.

The IPA I did for the competition I tried 2 dry hop additions. 1.5 oz for 7 days in primary, keg it then added another 1.5 oz in the keg. So far I don't see much difference from just a single dry addition but I need to experiment this more.

Al-Loves-Wine · April 29, 2014, 10:57:00 AM

Yeah I've started dry hopping in the keg myself. What really give me super aroma was rousing it with co2 everyday, and just leaving it outside of my fridge warm and pulling the gas ling out for a quick burst and purge the next day and do it again. As Roger pointed out, apparently the oils of the hops aren't released quite as well if they are cold. Only downfall of free hoping this way is it will leave a lot of hop debris in your beer, which I don't mind myself, but hard to get a clear beer. So a hop sock would likely mitigate that quite a bit. I think if you had a hop sock in the keg and left it, once it went in the fridge you wouldn't have much chance of any grassy flavors once it was down to 2C anyway.

blisster · April 29, 2014, 11:25:23 AM

I have tried dry hoping using a sock/marbles in the secondary and with a carboy dry hopper like this one:

http://arborfab.com/ocart/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=74

I prefer throwing the hops directly in the carboy and letting them fall out during cold crash (or after time). It's less work, I get better efficiency, and I find it always comes out just as clear anyway. That hopper is a real PITA to clean.

I usually add all my dry hops to the carboy when transferring from the primary. Adding more or less hops then is how I prefer to tweak the aroma profile rather than multiple or late dry hop additions. I haven't experimented much with late dry hopping but the entire secondary fermentation dry hopping works for me. I'm lazy though, haha.

Def want to try the keg dry hopping in a bag to compare results. Maybe I will try keg dry hopping with Spanish cedar for my next one.