How to 'ish - Dry hopping/Hop Teas - a different approach

A while back I had a contaminated brew after dry hopping a batch of my home brew. I eventually put it down to the bag not being properly sanitized. I had boiled it before use but possibly not for long enough. This experience coincided with my introduction to hop pellets, I noticed that they were effectively hop dust compressed into a pellet. So I took this thought to the next stage and tried blitzing them myself, I find hops, possibly due to the high oil content to be very sticky once they have been pitched and a bugger to get off your hands and everything else they touch when cleaning up.

My approach so far only practiced at the dry hopping stage is to take an amount of hops, my last attempt was to use 40g of Galaxy hops in a Youngs Harvest Bitter kit, Ive also done a couple of brews with 50g of Citra hop tea. I blitzed the hops using a stick blender and put the dust into my pre-sanitized 1L stainless steel double skinned cafetiere, I then poured boiling water over them and left them for 30 mins to mash. After pushing down the filter I poured the tea into my brew leaving the hop residue in the cafetiere. I have done this on 3 occasions and always when I transfer the brew from the initial FV bucket after the Krausen has settled into my airlock FV.

Each batch has turned out really well and has gone down well with my tasters (Wife, Son, Daughter in Law, Daughter and her Boyfriend)

On my next AG brew I plan to blitz all the hops at each required stage, I'm convinced that this approach will intensify the hop extraction. It may even require me to reduce the amount of hops used in a batch on the basis that too an intensive bittering for instance is not to my taste.

I'll report back on the next stage of this experiment.

I always blitz my flameout hops for BIAB. I'm convinced that you get a lot more flavour out by doing this and a 20 minute steep. I don't bother with hops that I'm boiling.
In addition, with blitzed hops, you get less retention of wort in the hops which you filter out. I use a traditional blender. It's useless for many things but works well for this. SWMBO bought it 'cos it's stylish and Nigella Lawson has one
The cafetiere is a very good idea

What do you mean by 'blitz'?

[Joe1002]

What do you mean by 'blitz'?

Chop them up into very fine pieces using a food processor or similar.

What do you mean by 'blitz'?

Get a large group of neighbours together in a tube station, all singing "Take me back to dear old blighty" while breaking up hops. Overhead German planes are not necessary, but they can add to the ambience.

What do you mean by 'blitz'?

Chop them up into very fine pieces using a food processor or similar.

Thanks.

What do you mean by 'blitz'?

Get a large group of neighbours together in a tube station, all singing "Take me back to dear old blighty" while breaking up hops. Overhead German planes are not necessary, but they can add to the ambience.

LOL. I'll have to find a air raid siren from somewhere.

@Duxuk,
One thing I didn't mention above, I'm planning to use a Hop Spider to hold the blitzed boil hops. The hop spider seems to be a fairly simple thing to make up so will give it a go.

For dry hopping my leaf pellets on my current brew I'm going to take a small amount of wort out the FV and blitz to make a slurry. I'm hoping that this will settle out easily in the FV before bottling.

@NickW,
Like the sound of that, it has the benefit of not increasing the brew length.

As mentioned above, here is my quicky hop spider for the boil hops.
Short piece of drain pipe (salvaged from an off-cut, I used a 75mm length) 3 x long bolts (150mm x 6mm) complete with washers either side of the drain pipe so a total of 6 nuts and 6 washers a stainless steel clamp and a small hop bag with fine holes so the hop dust does not get thru and into the brew. I had everything in my "That might come in handy some time" cupboard, not sure how much it would come to if purchased but maybe around a £5er. It took less than an hour to make.



p.s. you can't see the clamp, its hidden by the bag.

@LeithR
Just wondering why you use this in the boil?

I'm not at all keen on having free floating hop material in my brew that's all. At the moment I put my hops in weighted (with marbles) tied bags during the boil.

Working on the basis that in my view the blitzed hops provide more hop goodness to the beer and I don't want to have to deal with hop bits at the end of the boil containing them in a bag seems to be a reasonable next step and the hop spider offers a relatively simple way to do this.

Fair play LeithR.

But just to mention. I virtually blitzed my hops today and I had perfectly clear wort draining into the FV. Even better than when I chuck them in whole. I was very impressed with the clarity.

Without the hops what is forming a bed to help keep break material behind? (It's not a bad thing I suppose, as it can be seen as nutritious to the yeast)

Do you sanitise the stick blender?

@Raptor,
There is no need to, the blitzed hop material is sanitized when you pour the boiling water over it in preparation for the steep.

@NickW,
The break material always seems to be capable of forming a bed on its own. I have not yet brewed by just chucking the hops into the wart at the appropriate time in the boil, I've always bagged the hops.

Looks good and very interesting, LeithR. I will be trying this approach soon!

When you make your hop tea, do you get a lot of cloudy liquid going into the FV?

@ Raptor,Raptor
Yes, you will get small particles of hop going into the FV after you have pressed the cafetiere plunger, so the tea is a little cloudy. It settles out pretty quickly tho so I don't see it as a long term problem and certainly all my beers which have been treated in this way are now crystal clear OR all drunk!

I've also gone on to recover the yeast from these brews and re-use it successfully.

OK thanks for the info. Do you use any finings? If so do you use them before or after adding the hop tea?

Nope, just use patience, seems to work every time, sometimes its eventually.

I don't mind cloudy beer - but it needs to be stable somehow..

The beer is stable, it doesn't require any further stabilization, as long as you test the SG and ensure that it stays steady for 3 consecutive days around 1008 - 1010 and then prime it with sugar at around 80g/23L you will have no problems and the beer will clear perfectly.

I recently made a Theakston's OP and used my Hop Spider with all of the hops blitzed before going into the Hop Spider at the various times. The operation went smoothly but as its only 5 days into the Ferment which is going well and smells wonderful - time will tell, I'll update the the thread once the brew is bottled and ready to drink.

Good idea, however I am a little concerned that your Daughter in law has a Boyfriend? Does your son know?

Good spot Rivvo,
Not so much a typo but a copyo. Now corrected to save any embarrassment if my kids read this.

Lol sorry to detract from the innovative and educational content