Dry hopping at low temp, and then bottling?

[Finn B]

Hop creep is a curse, but it can be beaten by dry hopping at low temperatures. But I'm afraid to try that, because I'm not sure the creep won't occur later, when I bottle the beer and let it stand in room temperature to carbonate.

Anybody can tell whether that is a real threat?

 

[HighVoltageMan!]

Have you had problems with hop creep in the past? I have usually get it with WLP007, but I'm not sure the yeast makes much of a difference. With kegging I ignore it. I do bottle the beer to send to competitions and I haven't had complaints of over carbonated beer. I've seen it in commercial beers, Surly Xtra Citra is a bad one for it.

I'm not sure lower temperatures will keep the amylase from getting into the beer. I think if your worried about it, once you have bottled the beer and it's carbonated, you can refrigerate it and keep the yeast from reacting to the sugars produce by the enzymes in the hops. The other thing is that certain hops, like Citra, are worse than others and contain more amylase enzyme than others.

Good luck!

 

[Finn B]

Have you had problems with hop creep in the past? I have usually get it with WLP007, but I'm not sure the yeast makes much of a difference. With kegging I ignore it. I do bottle the beer to send to competitions and I haven't had complaints of over carbonated beer. I've seen it in commercial beers, Surly Xtra Citra is a bad one for it.

I'm not sure lower temperatures will keep the amylase from getting into the beer. I think if your worried about it, once you have bottled the beer and it's carbonated, you can refrigerate it and keep the yeast from reacting to the sugars produce by the enzymes in the hops. The other thing is that certain hops, like Citra, are worse than others and contain more amylase enzyme than others.

Good luck!

It's a constant PITA. I'm sure it's not yeast related, nor is it any one hop that's causing it. I suppose it's become more common now because hops are processed differently - taking better care of essential oils, I think, so in that way it's a good thing.

It could do a lot of harm during the time it takes for the beer to get carbonated, I think. I'm not going to start kegging just because of this - I'm really fond of bottles - so I'm getting a bit desperate.

Overcarbonation isn't the only problem. I don't want the beer getting dried out, eithe.

 

[Mark Farrall]

I'm noticing it less since it became the latest thing a few years ago. I believe a lot of the hop producers have been experimenting with different drying approaches to minimise the chances. For me it's just a few extra days in the fermenter after dry hopping to avoid the over-carbonation or diacetyl problems.

I've only seen it drop some of my beers a couple of points, so I don't think I'd even notice the drying out problem. If that's worrying you mash a little warmer or add a small amount of light crystal type grains to those beers to add a bit of extra body?

I've done a few batches of dry hopping at low temperatures, not because of hop creep. It certainly seems to work as well as standard fermentation temperature dry hopping. Not sure that I can say it's better, but it's at least as good.