DryHopping Problem?

AlanHarper · Mar 27, 2018

I have been brewing a Belgian Style IPA and was dry hopping with Brambling Cross pellets BEFORE pitching the yeast for fermenting.
This is my problem - see picture - after 3 days with the hops in a sterilised bag suspended in the wort - that was racked off from kettle into a fermentation bin - I got the brown crud formed on the surface and fermentation bubbles surrounding it. The aroma was something like baked beans!! This was NOT what I was expecting. The wort was at 1.061 when I put the hops in (this was an experiment as it was first time dry hopping and may not of been the correct thing to do).
Is this the sort of thing to expect? Should I bin the whole lot and start again? I have re-racked the wort into another FV and filtered what I could and pitched the yeast. Is this a waste of time? The only thing NOT sterilised was the hop pellets. Could they have introduced some bacterial infection that caused the bloom?
Any ideas would be most welcome.

terrym · Mar 27, 2018

Dry hopping is usually carried out when the primary has finished, since there is not much CO2 bubbling out of the beer to strip out volatile oils, which is what you are trying to infuse into the beer by the dry hop process.
Hops are normally considered to be 'sterile', so in theory you should not have attracted any unwanted nasties into your beer. If you sanitised the bag that should be OK too.
My suggestion is persevere with your beer, and to just leave it alone and then go through the normal cycle. Beer in the FV and in the first two weeks or so often tastes nothing like the finished product.
Best of luck with it.
And dry hop about 10 days in next time. :thumb:

AlanHarper · Mar 27, 2018

terrym said:
Dry hopping is usually carried out when the primary has finished, since there is not much CO2 bubbling out of the beer to strip out volatile oils, which is what you are trying to infuse into the beer by the dry hop process.
Hops are normally considered to be 'sterile', so in theory you should not have attracted any unwanted nasties into your beer. If you sanitised the bag that should be OK too.
My suggestion is persevere with your beer, and to just leave it alone and then go through the normal cycle. Beer in the FV and in the first two weeks or so often tastes nothing like the finished product.
Best of luck with it.
And dry hop about 10 days in next time. :thumb:

Thanks Terry. I stopped the dry hops because of the reaction I had in the FV. I can still smell it now - not very pleasant. I will carry on and see what happens.

Simonh82 · Mar 28, 2018

If you added dry hops before adding yeast and the left it for 3 days it is quite likely that your beer is a gonna. You need to add the yeast straight away so that they can establish themselves and crowd out any of the small number of bacteria and wild yeast which might be in your wort after boiling.

If you don't add yeast straight away you are leaving 20L of tasty food for bacteria and wild yeast to munch on without anything to hinder them.

You can try to pitch your yeast and see how it turns out but the nasty smell isn't a good sign.

Without wanting to sound critical, you've asked a couple of questions on here recently that have suggested you aren't clear about some of the basics of brewing. I would really recommend getting a good brewing book like How To Brew by John Palmer and following a few simple recipes. Once you have the basics down you will be in a better place to experiment

Grizzly299 · Apr 1, 2018

Fermentation in the pic looks normal to me, chunks may just be trub/break material. Smells during fermentation, especially early fermentation can be all sorts of random, so try not to worry about them.

Dry hops may be added at any point during the fermentation.

Old/Current wisdom suggests that adding dry hops from anywhere between 24hrs - 7 days before bottling and after fermentation has finished.

New England IPA's and the IPA craze in general has encouraged people to try lots of different ways getting hop flavour into beer. One method now getting some attention is adding hops during early and mid fermentation to achieve biotransformation of hop oils giving some soft/juicy/fruity flavours and in general a different flavour profile than one would expect from a traditional Dry hop addition . There is some dispute about which yeast strains are capable of transforming the hop oils, but really my point is that you can add hops whenever you want.

It is definately advisable to wait until fermentation has started before adding anything to the wort, as others have mentioned.

The Baron · Apr 1, 2018

I would not leave my wort 3 days before pitching as a general rule. Overnight for no chill is ok but then adding dry hops before the yeast is asking for bacterial infection. You may be lucky this time just add the yeast and let it ferment out also Bramling cross is not a renown dry hop and has had some poor results by other brewers.
All is not lost though as you will get some strange smells sometimes from brewing/hops just add the yeast and ferment out fingers crossed
I generally dry hop after the first initial vigorous fermentation has started to curtail

AlanHarper · Apr 1, 2018

Thanks guys. I did determine that I should have fermented first before the dry hopping. My fault entirely. I will not make the same mistake again. The hops did bring in some strange foreign yeast infection and the wort was a perfect breeding ground. I took the decision to tip it all down the drain and start again with another brew that has just finished the boil. So SecondBashMash is on the way - no dry hopping this time.
I managed to get 81.5% from my mash (calculated from info from How To Brew - John Palmer) so when it cools I will pitch Safale S-04 and let it bubble away. You see I am learning Simonh82 :-).

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