Dry Hopping Question

TheZel66

TheZel66

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I'm dry hopping a beer in the secondary. I'm using fresh hop leafs. They simply float atop the beer. Is this normal? will they sink to the bottom soon, or is that how they stay.
 
If you wait a couple hours, you'll have only CO2 in the head space. Then you can "swirly" the hops around in there without oxidizing your brew. I use the plastic carboys so I can just tilt the carboy and do a swirling motion. The hops will swirl down into the beer (at least the pellets do... I assume it does the same with whole hops). It will all float back up, by while its doing that, you are increasing surface area contact. You can do it a few time while you dry hop. I usually cold crash for a couple of days which helps to settle out all the particles.

This is a method that the brewer from Lagunitas recommended to homebrewers during an interview on Jamil z's show about cloning the Lagunitas IPA. He actually said to swirl it 48 hours after adding the hops. I assume that's to be sure there's no oxygen in there because, from what I understand, swirling oxygen into your beer at this point could oxidize your beer and make it taste like cardboard... not cool.

I actually just dry hopped that clone tonight. I'll see if I can film a "swirly". I'll post a youtube link...
 
MadScienter said:
I actually just dry hopped that clone tonight.
Click to expand...

Could you share the recipe?


+1 on the help with swirling.
 
Swirlied it up.... I'll let you know how it turns out.
 
I haven't tried it yet, but its gonna be hard to "set and forget" the carbonation on this one! This is my first time brewing it, and it's in secondary right now. I CAN say that I pushed on the top of the carboy a bit to force a couple of bubbles out the airlock... and it smelled great!! This will be a perfect excuse to go get some lagunitas and compare.

For the record, Jamil says he nailed it...
 
quick update... I kegged that clone tonight and pulled a test glass. I'll have to go get some some lagunitas to do a legitimate comparison, but I CAN tell you it's good. To be honest, I don't even care if I cloned it or not because I'm thoroughly enjoying this beer!! success in my book.

but i'll get some lagunitas anyway and report back... (i've had worse assignments)
 

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I don't know how much a factor the swirling was, but it's got a nice hop aroma. thanks!

By the way, this "cream ale" I made I used only weyermans pilsner malt. WOW! I didn't think I could brew a beer that light in color.
 
TheZel66 said:
I don't know how much a factor the swirling was, but it's got a nice hop aroma. thanks!

By the way, this "cream ale" I made I used only weyermans pilsner malt. WOW! I didn't think I could brew a beer that light in color.
Click to expand...

I don't know either! But it's gotta be better than nothing! Larry's method of weighting down a bag is probably better. But there are pluses and minuses. In a bag, the hops are effectively in a "ball" (which reduces surface area), but also submerged (which increases surface area contact). Free floating hops obviously have more contact because they are spread out, but only when submerged because the stuff floating on the top is not being fully utilized. I swirl mine every time I walk by, but there is still a lot of time that the stuff sits floating. There is a significant amount of time during cold crash when the free floating hops sink, which I would imagine helps quite a bit... but I don't know how well the beer absorbs the aromacy (apparently not a word...) while it is at 30 degrees. Maybe what I'll do is brew a 10 gallon batch so that all other factors are as equal as possible and then try both methods in 5 gal secondaries to compare.
 
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