Dry hopping with tea-bag style hops. Should it sink?

[jimbrookski]

Hi all,

Been lurking on the forums for a while, trying to soak up information.

I'm currently on my second brew using LME kits. I live in an apartment, so kits is all I can really do at the moment.

For my second batch this is pretty much what I did:

Ingredients:
1 can LME Black Rock Golden Ale
1 can LME Black Rock Wheat
2 Amarillo Finishing Hops in a bag
1 Safale US-05 dry ale yeast

Method:
Clean and sterilise all brew equipment

In 500ml boiling water, steep a bag of finishing hops
In the sterile fermenter, dissolve both cans of malt in a litre of boiling water.
Top up cold water to 21 litres.
Add yeast and screw down lid

After 3 days, open the lid and toss in the second bag of hops

OG: 1062

Unfortunately, in my haste and excitement, I made the mistake of pitching the yeast straight away, instead of getting the wort to a good temperature. So for the first couple of days, it sat fermenting at 28C, and I'm pretty sure it finished within 48 hours... Probably not so good, but you live and learn. I cooled it down with some ice to 18C, and it's since crept up to 24C where it's been for the last few days.

It's only been 1 week since I set this going, and I had a test and a taste today. Gravity has dropped to 1012, so I think it's pretty well fermented. Taste was pretty good... quite bitter (I'm wondering if 500ml of the hops water at the beginning may have been too much), but I didn't get much in the way of hops aroma.

The tea-bag amarillo bag is just floating on the top. Should it have sunk into the liquid? Or will this not matter, in the scheme of things?

Cheers,

Jim

 

[wide eyed and legless]

I have never done kits Jim but I do dry hop with large tea bags purchased from China I put the hops and a weight in mine a couple of those glass marbles that aren't round, good to see that you are living and learning experience is the best teacher.

 

[joshF]

They won't usually sink Jim, same as how some normal tea bags don't sink (air bubbles and all that).

It's also probably tasting quite bitter since you used 2 pre-hopped tins of goop. The wheat kit would have been fairly mild bittering but you combine both and they are definitely going to have an impact in terms of bitterness. The Hop water at the begging wouldn't have contributed anything (or extremely extremely minimal).

See how you go with this one and then you can get a starting point on what to improve. Most people here will tell you to upgrade the kit yeasts and focus on temp control but since you've already got the yeast sorted, i'd say just try and ensure the pitching temp is in the ballpark of 18-20 and then try and maintain it there as best you can if you don't have a fermenting fridge.

You'll see the difference straight away once you get temps under control. One of my very first all grains and before i had temp control was a fatter yak and i thought it was awesome the first time around (fermented with US05 around 24 or so) but then about 6 months later i tried the exact same recipe again with temp control at 18 and it was awesome.

As soon as you see noted improvements in your beer and you want to progress from kits etc, BIAB is still absolutely possible in an apartment. I had a 3V system in an apartment and whilst a bitch to cleanup was still quite possible. BIAB with an urn or something of that equivalent is super super easy though and yields better results than kits.

Good luck with it

 

[browndog]

The float they all float. You need a good lump of stainless in the bag to weigh IT down and get it near the bottom.

 

[jimbrookski]

Thanks a lot guys. That bag's been sitting in there laughing at me while I watch, not wanting to take the lid off again to get it to sink. Oh well, like you say, live and learn

It's also probably tasting quite bitter since you used 2 pre-hopped tins of goop. The wheat kit would have been fairly mild bittering but you combine both and they are definitely going to have an impact in terms of bitterness. The Hop water at the begging wouldn't have contributed anything (or extremely extremely minimal).

Thanks Josh. The Wheat kit is actually unhopped, so it's either normal, and I'm trying to hard to gauge flavours and profile, or something else is going on.

She'll be right.

Cheers.

 

[wavemaker]

I saw in a thread above this that putting a tea bag of hops in at the end of fermentation may have caused an infection.

 

[Bribie G]

In my kits days I would add dry hops on day 3, just open the bag and add the pellets. They sink eventually.