Hop creep???

[Stuart Wilson]

Made an extra strong bitter, starting on 5th April this year. No specific recipe... it was a brew to use up all the left over bits and pieces I had accumulated. Malt was bohemian pilsner / golden promise (6kg total) and chucked in the remains of a batch of light crystal / carafe special Ii. Loads of various hops in boil.....some out of date.

OG was 1.072.

Yeast was mangrove jack M42 New World Strong Ale ..... fermented like the clappers and gravity was 1.02 after 5 days. That's 71% attenuation.

At that point chucked in 167g of Nelson Sauvion / Amerillo.pellets. Again....just left overs that were out of date.

Usually get about 75 % attenuation with M42, and expected fermentation to finish within a week. However, it just kept going at a very slow rate. SG was 1.018 on 22nd April, 1.016 on 3rd May.

Finally bottled yesterday. FG was 1.010 with is 85% attenuation and 8.5% ABV. An interesting brew....think it will taste ok once conditioned.

Hop creep has been mentioned on these boards before. At first I was sceptical, but did a bit of googling, and it is definitely real.


Think the extended fermentation here may be due to the large amount of hops added as fermentation coming to a close??

 

[foxy]

Made an extra strong bitter, starting on 5th April this year. No specific recipe... it was a brew to use up all the left over bits and pieces I had accumulated. Malt was bohemian pilsner / golden promise (6kg total) and chucked in the remains of a batch of light crystal / carafe special Ii. Loads of various hops in boil.....some out of date.

OG was 1.072.

Yeast was mangrove jack M42 New World Strong Ale ..... fermented like the clappers and gravity was 1.02 after 5 days. That's 71% attenuation.

At that point chucked in 167g of Nelson Sauvion / Amerillo.pellets. Again....just left overs that were out of date.

Usually get about 75 % attenuation with M42, and expected fermentation to finish within a week. However, it just kept going at a very slow rate. SG was 1.018 on 22nd April, 1.016 on 3rd May.

Finally bottled yesterday. FG was 1.010 with is 85% attenuation and 8.5% ABV. An interesting brew....think it will taste ok once conditioned.

Hop creep has been mentioned on these boards before. At first I was sceptical, but did a bit of googling, and it is definitely real.


Think the extended fermentation here may be due to the large amount of hops added as fermentation coming to a close??

Hops contain sugars which are fermentable (what plant doesn't). A headache for commercial brewers not so the home brewer.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Hops contain sugars which are fermentable (what plant doesn't). A headache for commercial brewers not so the home brewer.

Hops also contain enzymes that break down the residual long-chain sugars into short-chain sugars and the yeast gets back to work.

 

[chthon]

Yep, had the same last week. But I only dry hopped for a couple of days before I got it. But most hops were already dropped out, I racked it into another vessel with a bit of extra DME and the day after, fermentation was finished.

 

[RichardM]

Hops contain sugars which are fermentable (what plant doesn't). A headache for commercial brewers not so the home brewer.

It could result in a headache for the home brewer given the higher than expected ABV