Offer: Keg King Hop Spider

[welly2]

Used this hop spider for the first (and only) time last batch. Was pretty disappointed with it. Decided to get rid of it as I honestly don't think I got full hop utilisation as a result. I used it because I had 200g of hops to go in the batch and thought my Grainfather would clog up as a result. Well, it didn't clog at least but I think for me, hops directly in the kettle and a big whirlpool would stop clogging too. We'll see next brew day.

In the meantime, someone can have this. Not looking for any money for it but what I would like is some beer - yours or someone elses. A few bottles of a tasty beer would be gratefully appreciated in exchange for this bit of shiny kit.

 

[primusbrew]

Hey mate, where are you located?

 

[primusbrew]

I have a grainfather too and have been thinking about getting one of these for beers with a lot of hops. I'd be interested to hear what you think the problem with it is?

 

[welly2]

I'm in Alexandria, NSW.

The problem I had was looking at the boil, there was fervorous activity going on around the hop spider but bugger all happening within the hop spider. It just felt like the wort was struggling to get into it. I don't know. Maybe it doesn't matter but I did throw 200g of hops in and while the batch is still fermenting (about 8 days now) and so there's a still bit of sweetness in it, there's definitely not 89 IBUs of hop bitterness in this beer. When I threw the hops at flameout into it, they pretty much sat on the surface inside the hop spider and so there definitely wasn't any utilisation of the hops outside the hop spider. I'm going to stick with throwing the whole lot in the kettle and deal with the pump clogging after.

It's still bloody tasty (90% pale malt, 7% crystal and 3% wheat malt, 200g of Simcoe over the course of 60, 20, 5 and 0 minutes to make 89 IBU) and I'm going to highly enjoy getting pissed onsavouring this beer, I wanted it to be a belter.

Anyway, it's out there for someone else to have a go!

 

[carniebrew]

I haven't had any utilisation issues with my KK hop spider. Grainfather suggested adding around 10% more hops when using one, but I've just found that giving it a stir, or even feeding the recirc into the hop spider when doing a hop stand at flameout is giving me great results.

I don't think whirlpools are very useful in the GF given how narrow the kettle is, and I also recall the GF guys saying whirlpools are unnecessary given the filter setup anyway.

 

[Seaquebrew]

Agree with recirculating into hop spider after flameout, works a treat

Cheers

 

[GalBrew]

I've also found it useful to jiggle the hop spider around a bit to make sure that there is a good changover of wort within it.

 

[welly2]

This has gone now and in its place lay a sixer of IPA. Cheers.