Dry Hopping Without A 'bag'

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thrillho

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Melbourne
Hey guys,

On Thursday night I chucked in 27gms of Hersbrucker hops into my FV- straight in and no bag.

Quick background:
Mangrove Jacks Pilsner 2.2kg
1kg Dextrose
400gms dry wheat malt

That has been fermenting for 7 days before I added the dry pellets.


A couple of questions:

1) It's now settled around the top of the beer, some of it fell down and is now in the gunk at the bottom- will the rest of it settle and do I bottle only when that has happened?

2) Or have I fudged it up by dry hopping without a bag?

3) Also, and last one, it smells very hoppy- taste is also starting to get there, but I hope it won't overpower. Do hoppy aromas and flavours subside when conditioning?

Thanks!
 
1. Yeah, just leave it for a few days, should settle. If not, probably best to avoid bottling the green gunk.
2. No biggie, happens a fair bit. Quite a few brewers bung their dry hops in 'commando', gravity is a handy thing.
3. Hard to say, there's a few different factors, not least the aroma qualities of the hops themselves. Generally there's many profound flavour and aroma changes that take place between the fermenting beer and the served beer. 27g is not an outrageous fermenter addition, but do expect somethings to change by the time you're drinking it.

I do admire your enthusiasm for exploring your new- found craft, great stuff indeed! :icon_cheers: I realise you're probably not trying to nail the style, however Pils is not really a late- or dry- hopped style (very few lagers are dry hopped). But you never know with these things- its not really a Pils with the wheat in there, plus the kit yeast is quite likely an ale strain anyway, while I'd guess you're fermenting at ale temperatures as well, so it may be quite an interesting beer, just perhaps not what we'd recognize as a typical Pils! :beer:
 
I heard it was against the rules in Germany to dry hop!
 
Almost all of the hops will drop to the bottom by about day 9 or 10, 12 at the outside.

I doubt that little amount of dry hops will produce an unbalanced beer, even a beer with a pretty thin body. I dry hopped my current double IPA with 180g of hops (in a 19l corny) and it is very smooth and well balanced.
 
I do admire your enthusiasm for exploring your new- found craft, great stuff indeed! :icon_cheers: I realise you're probably not trying to nail the style, however Pils is not really a late- or dry- hopped style (very few lagers are dry hopped). But you never know with these things- its not really a Pils with the wheat in there, plus the kit yeast is quite likely an ale strain anyway, while I'd guess you're fermenting at ale temperatures as well, so it may be quite an interesting beer, just perhaps not what we'd recognize as a typical Pils! :beer:
Cheers for the response- I'm definitely just trying to experiment these days, I'm pretty 'over' your stock standard sort of beer, and I'm just looking to mix it up with some different additions and all that. Pretty excited to see what the hops and the wheat malt do to the base Pilsner style- it had a beautiful aroma and taste pre dry-hop so I'm hoping the hops with just balance out nicely.

I'm also experimenting because I'll probably start trying some simple BIAB type get-ups early in the uni holiday period (as of Monday!)
 
Chuck handfulls of that aromatic goodness in there. Don't worry about seeing a little flaky stuff going in the last bottle, it all comes out in the wash.
The first couple of times I dryhopped I marked the last couple of bottles in the batch for comparison after a few weeks. No difference other than a dual-layered sediment. All good!
 
out of interest what hops and or recipe?

The hops were:
80g Amarillo50g Simco50g Columbus
The malt was from the 2nd runnings of a barley wine (my recipe), with a kilo of dextrose thrown in to dry it out. Any good double IPA malt bill would work, eg Pliny the Elder.
Next time I use the the hop bill I'll drop the Simco down to about 40g & up the Amarillo 10, just to balance it a bit better. NB I use a hop bag in the keg and just put it in the fridge when I think it's ready.
 
I used a bag on my dry hop tonight, though I did put a rubber band to close it which I'm starting to think is a bad idea now that it's in my fermenter.
 
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