Dry Hopping Gone Wrong?

[Nevalicious]

Well, just racked my first lager from the primary after two weeks inc. a Diacytel Rest. I racked to secondary and have crashed to 1 deg and intend to keep it there till next monday.

I "forgot" to add hops when making the beast (hallertau pellets), so decided to try my hand at dry hopping once it made it to the secondary. I didn't really know how to go about this so I made up a "teabag" of my own (sunday and no brew stores open in adelaide (come to think of it, not much is open in adelaide on a sunday <_< ))

Checked it before dragging myself off to work this morning and I didn't allow room for the hops to expand when wet. This has consequently split the tea bag (a genuine bonafied real teabag emptied of tea and filled with pellets). I thought I was being clever improvising, but clearly it blew up in my face...

Question is, the floated hops on top of my secondary. Will these sink with time or am I gonna have to attempt to bottle the beer and dodge the floaties??

Anyone have a similar experience?? Do people just chuck the hops "naked" into the secondary to dry hop??

Also, a week with 25g of Hallertau in a 23lt Lager... Ok??? Opinons, shoot downs? h34r:

Thanks in advance

Tyler

 

[manticle]

Is this brew a pre-bittered kit or another type of brew (ie mash or extract without hops)?

Dry hopping will give you hop aroma and some flavour but no bittering so if it's not a prebittered kit, you'll need to either boil up some water with hops in it and add it (cooled) to the brew or buy some isohop extract. Supposedly optimum utilisation/smooth bitterness happens in wort of 1040 but if you add sugar in you'll need to up the temp and let that ferment out again.

Don't worry about the hop pellets in the brew though. They'll disintegrate and drop out with time. Loads of people dry hop by just chucking straight in.

 

[bum]

Question is, the floated hops on top of my secondary. Will these sink with time or am I gonna have to attempt to bottle the beer and dodge the floaties??

Do people just chuck the hops "naked" into the secondary to dry hop??

They'll sink down, given time.

Yeah, plenty of people just throw the hops in au naturale. Probably the majority of people, even. You can completely ignore the notion of teabags should you wish. Only possible downside to just throwing them in is if you do it in primary and wish to reuse the yeast cake. Not an issue for you on this one obviously.

 

[thesunsettree]

hi mate,
i put hops in loose in fermenter (although steeped in hot water first) they just become part of the sludge at bottom of fermenter at the end so no issues there. i have used the tea bag store bought hops before and the are always soggy when i empty the fermenter and resemble the loose hops i use when the go in at the start. i fillter prior to carbing so i dont have an issues with it being in the final product but i would suggest that if you have no issues with excessive yeast cake etc in ur final product the loose hops should pose no problem. (all imho of course)

matt

 

[Oatlands Brewer]

probly re stating the obvious here mate...your probs not the hops in seacondary...its no bitterness as mentioned by Manticle.

personaly i would stear clear of isohop.....to me its what makes kit beers taste doddgy anyway..

Try the hop tea boilup....really nothing to loose

 

[manticle]

personaly i would stear clear of isohop

I agree. Mentioned only in passing as a possible solution but I'd make a hop boil long before I went down that route.

 

[Nevalicious]

They'll sink down, given time.

Yeah, plenty of people just throw the hops in au naturale. Probably the majority of people, even. You can completely ignore the notion of teabags should you wish. Only possible downside to just throwing them in is if you do it in primary and wish to reuse the yeast cake. Not an issue for you on this one obviously.

I shall try this next time... Great news. And as for the tea solution, another slam dunk!

Manticle, it was a kit mate, Coopers Eurotrash Lager using two rehydrated s-23 yeasts and a BE2 (nothing too adventurous as I didn't want to add heaps of stuff only to cock it up during the fermenting process (new fridge etc etc). Think of this as a trial run for lagers to see how they go... I was only after flavour/aroma anywho

Truth be told, before Homebrew, all I did was buy ales and the same goes for when I venture out. I usually only buy ales off tap so maybe I'll do a few lagers but prob end up sticking with Ales. Quicker and (maybe) more consistent results.

Tyler :beer:

 

[Oatlands Brewer]

if it was a kit id say youre all good mate, just dont stir the seaconding vessel up to much at bottling if using the tap