Dry hopping technique

[dan125]

Fill from your keg with a beer gun. Works well.

Leave your keg at serving pressure and temp for 2 weeks then chill right down and bottle to eliminate any foaming.

I make 28L batches so end up with 12-14 pints more than I can fit in a keg. I fill them direct from the FS with a beer gun, but need to get the hoppy goodness into the beer before packaging

 

[dan125]

Hopefully just a few days away from trying out the CO2 rumbling gizmo now.
Time to start getting out some of the yeast - there seems a little bit more than usual, maybe down to the pretty large pitch I started with:-

 

[dan125]

I'm halfway down to dry hopping temp, and have got out most of the yeast, but have an annoyingly larger than normal yeast ring stuck inside the FS - I'm wondering whether a CO2 rumbling might get it back in the beer to then settle into a collection bottle?
Might make for a good test drive for the rumbling gizmo??

 

[Hoddy]

I'm halfway down to dry hopping temp, and have got out most of the yeast, but have an annoyingly larger than normal yeast ring stuck inside the FS - I'm wondering whether a CO2 rumbling might get it back in the beer to then settle into a collection bottle?
Might make for a good test drive for the rumbling gizmo??
View attachment 15928

Yeah that’s an annoying situation. I’m down to 2oC now so (once I get a bit of work done) I was thinking of trying to draw off the yeast cake from my HS and then dry hop with a ton of pellet hops

I need to recover the yeast though as I want to wash and reuse. I think this will be generation 4 of TYB Vermont.

 

[dan125]

Yeah that’s an annoying situation. I’m down to 2oC now so (once I get a bit of work done) I was thinking of trying to draw off the yeast cake from my HS and then dry hop with a ton of pellet hops

I need to recover the yeast though as I want to wash and reuse. I think this will be generation 4 of TYB Vermont.

Do you reckon you'll still be able to get the yeast out OK ? I was worried that if I left it all in before I cold crash it'd compact down and I wouldn't be able to get any of it out.

Well done to get to gen 4 wih the vermont yeast - if this dry hopping thing goes well I'm gonna try going to gen 3 with some Imperial Barbarian over the next few brews

 

[Hoddy]

Do you reckon you'll still be able to get the yeast out OK ? I was worried that if I left it all in before I cold crash it'd compact down and I wouldn't be able to get any of it out.

Well done to get to gen 4 wih the vermont yeast - if this dry hopping thing goes well I'm gonna try going to gen 3 with some Imperial Barbarian over the next few brews

A bit of a delay being able to get into the brew shed to do it. Gonna try and squeeze it in before bed so I’ll report back on how the yeast comes out.

 

[peebee]

… Coming off a standard 3/8 CO2 line, with a valve for a bit of control, then through a one-way check valve to prevent any flow back up the pipe, then into a 1/2in silicon tube via a barb, and straight onto the bottling attachment that comes with the FS. ...

I wouldn't use silicone tube post boil. Don't know how much oxygen pickup there would be in this scenario, but I wouldn't assume "zero".

First thing I noticed from silicone tubes porosity to oxygen was a big increase in yeast growth.

 

[Hoddy]

So I managed to get about 1.5 litres of yeast and trub out of the bottom of the HS using the bottling spike and silicone tube. Crikey that butterfly valve on the bottom is rubbish at flow control. Just that last 250ml of yeast I just couldn’t get out without it channeling and getting just too much beer come through.

But we are at 3oC and I’ve got most of the yeast off so in went the dry hop. 130g of T90 chinook and 50g cryo mosaic and 50g T90 pellets of mosaic. Give it a day or so and I will give it its first co2 rumble

 

[dan125]

I wouldn't use silicone tube post boil. Don't know how much oxygen pickup there would be in this scenario, but I wouldn't assume "zero".

First thing I noticed from silicone tubes porosity to oxygen was a big increase in yeast growth.

Here's the finished gizmo - with just a very short section of silicon. It'll only be attached for a minute or two at a time and hopefully the pressure of CO2 inside when in use will keep the O2 out.

 

[dan125]

The CO2 rumbling worked really well at getting the annoying ring of yeast back into the beer - I'm hoping it'll have all settled in the bottle when I go and check in a minute;

 

[NIGHTSKY BREWING]

All great stuff.... for me it's little and often as soon as I reach FG and have raised the fermentation temps at the end of primary .....but for me it's also important to have a highly flocculent yeast that drops out first.oils are best extracted when warm..... and l dangle dry hops up in the beer....and swap around varieties every 3 days.

 

[Tunabeast]

Really interesting thread and technique for agitation on homebrew scale. I hope the results are positive.

If you haven't already read the thesis on dry hopping by Wolfe (https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/downloads/jq085p11m) then it's definitely worth checking out.

I'm also trying to achieve maximum hop contact with beer (just dumping hops in the FV/secondary doesn't achieve satisfactory aroma profile IMO) and have done a couple of small scale (pretty rough!) experiments. The holy grail appears to be hop re-circulation using a pump but I'm yet to find an easy way of doing this. If anyone's got any ideas would be great to hear your suggestions.

 

[peebee]

... The holy grail appears to be hop re-circulation using a pump but I'm yet to find an easy way of doing this. If anyone's got any ideas would be great to hear your suggestions.

Pretty much what I was doing to discover how porous silicone tubing is (earlier post). Beer + Oxygen = Vinegar, and you don't need the beer to be "infected" to make it happen. So, careful how you do it.

 

[dan125]

All great stuff.... for me it's little and often as soon as I reach FG and have raised the fermentation temps at the end of primary .....but for me it's also important to have a highly flocculent yeast that drops out first.oils are best extracted when warm..... and l dangle dry hops up in the beer....and swap around varieties every 3 days.

It does seem counter intuitive to dry hop at low temps, but the brewers in the vid reported good results so its worth trying once at least.
However the main advantage they give for dry hopping cold seems to be the reduction of yeast in beer that will absorb the hoppiness.
As it seems impossible to get all the yeast out of the FS this advantage may not be so great - when the remaining yeast resettled after rumbling only a small amount ended up in the collection bottle and the rest is back on the rim at the bottom of the cone. I'm not wasting another pint of precious ale trying to get any more out, so I'm not sure I'm got much more out than I would have at higher temps.
I'm at 3C now will chuck the dry hops in tonight:-

 

[Prakash Ross]

I tried this with a brewdog recipe and found it gave the beer a lot more aroma than usual

 

[dan125]

I tried this with a brewdog recipe and found it gave the beer a lot more aroma than usual

Do you mean the cold dry hopping or the agitating, or both? Glad to hear whichever it was worked well

 

[dan125]

My dry hops went in last night - 225g Galaxy (that seemed quite lack lustre ) and 60g Nelson
By this morning they settled in the bottom of the cone, and seemed to have broken up less than they usually do when dry hopping warmer

So I tried a bit of early morning rumbling which was at least a partial success.
The bubbles defo get things moving around but there was still quite alot of undisturbed hop around the bottom of the cone when I'd finished. I'm hoping some/all of this will get stirred up in later rumblings.

Here's a pic just after starting rumbling and another after it'd been bubbling away for a little while.

Going through CO2 at an alarming rate though, having now nearly emptied a 6kg bottle in about 6 weeks - wondering if I've got a small leak somewhere??

 

[Leon103]

My dry hops went in last night - 225g Galaxy (that seemed quite lack lustre ) and 60g Nelson
By this morning they settled in the bottom of the cone, and seemed to have broken up less than they usually do when dry hopping warmer
View attachment 15946

So I tried a bit of early morning rumbling which was at least a partial success.
The bubbles defo get things moving around but there was still quite alot of undisturbed hop around the bottom of the cone when I'd finished. I'm hoping some/all of this will get stirred up in later rumblings.

Here's a pic just after starting rumbling and another after it'd been bubbling away for a little while.

View attachment 15947
View attachment 15949

Going through CO2 at an alarming rate though, having now nearly emptied a 6kg bottle in about 6 weeks - wondering if I've got a small leak somewhere??

Or you drink too much

 

[dan125]

Or you drink too much

According to the gas supplier a 6.35kg bottle should be enough to pump 151 gallons
I do like a beer but that works out at over 200 pints a week
Something must be amiss

 

[dan125]

Pretty much what I was doing to discover how porous silicone tubing is (earlier post). Beer + Oxygen = Vinegar, and you don't need the beer to be "infected" to make it happen. So, careful how you do it.

I had no idea it was so O2 porous. Were you doing this in a closed system?
makes me wonder if there's a better alternative to the silicon tube