Hopping - Bag, Spider or Dump it?

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_jon_

_jon_

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So, after a miserable end to Fridays brew day! I was majorly running out of time as had to go away for a Bday weekend in Bristol. I was short on time, and couldn't siphon the wort from the kettle to the FV. The tap got blocked in 5 mins, then the auto shiphon as a backup got clogged. It took ages to fill the FV, and exposed the wort to way too much atmosphere.

Then I overfilled the FV slightly, and when I got the oxygenation wand out and gave it a blast, it went mental and spilled everywhere!

Nightmare, and the beer is probably ruined.. but I'm fermenting it anyway, as I suppose you never know.

Do you guys generally just dump the hops in? Or do you use a muslin bag? Or a hop spider? Or do you have a way of siphoning out of the kettle without picking up the hops? I have a pump now, and I don't want to ruin the pump with hops. Thinking about brewing again tomorrow... Just in case Fridays batch is a mess.
 
I cant answer your question about what to use for hops debris as I use a completely different 'system' to you. But just to reasure you, your beer will be fine.
How do I know? Because, when I used to do full 23L batches, before I started no-chilling, the way I would chill the wort was with ice. First of all I would add a 5L chunk of ice to my concentrated wort to both dilute it and chill it. But 5L of ice is not nearly enought to chill 23L of boiling wort to pitching temp. So then I would start add 2L and 500ml ice bottles to continue to chill.
This all took about 2hours to do, with me continually opening the FV to stir the wort (and also getting my not very sanitised hands in the wort to remove melted ice bottles and put frozen ones into the wort). So the wort was repeatedly exposed to the air over two hours
Finally after chilling down to pitching temp I would then get a mechanical hand whisk and aerate the wort. This took about 5 mins so, the wort was again exposed to the air whilst I whisked it like a loony.
I did the above on many batches before I switched to no-chilling and never lost one batch to infection
 
Oh that's reassuring to know. Maybe I'll be okay then.

How will I know if I've lost it to infection? Will it just taste foul?

It's bubbling away like crazy in the FV, so the yeast is very much alive! Fingers crossed, but it's SUPER hazy!! Because there are so many hop particles in it, I might do a secondary fermentation in a 2nd FV, and pump the beer in through a muslin filter or something. I Maybe that'll help clear it a little bit.. And I doubt the muslin will be fine enough to catch the yeast... so it should just get rid of the unwanted debris.. Then Maybe I'll dry hop in a muslin bag.

What do you think?
 
When it comes to colonising the wort first, yeast vs other microbes is like me running a race against usain bolt. Brewery yeast are adapted to it over thaousands of generations and can colonise it far faster than anything else. The first thing they do is lower the ph to make the wort less hospitable to other microbes, then they eat all the available food, use all the oxygen and produce ethenol. These things make it really hard for other microbes to get going. It's almost like yeast are territorial.
If a beer tastes fine and smells fine it usually is fine. Even with one of the most common infections, pellicle,you can still save the beer by racking from below it and leave the pellicle in the FV. I've done that before and the beer was fine.
Your right muslin isn't fine enough to filter out yeast. It needs to be in he microns (cant remember how many now) to do so.
 
Very interesting and informative response. Thank you.

So really, I think I was panicking over nothing. While it's good to remain vigilant about sanitation when brewing, a few little mix ups along the way don't necessarily mean a spoiled beer.
 
Yes, sanitation is extremely important , so dont skip out on it. But beer is extremely resistant to infection. I think in our germ averse world people panic all to readily about their beer getting infected. You wouldnt beleive how many threads I see here about worries about infection
 
I have a wand on my syphon with a little cup like attachment on the bottom. I tie a piece of boiled net curtain material around this and it filters the hop debris out very well.
 
Duxuk said:
I have a wand on my syphon with a little cup like attachment on the bottom. I tie a piece of boiled net curtain material around this and it filters the hop debris out very well.
Click to expand...

I like this idea, very straight forward and effective.

As I am now going to be using a pump, I have ordered a couple of the netting things which screw to the inside of the tap. I can't remember what they're called... but they will stop any debris I think.
 

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