Snub nose appollo dry hopping. Best practice?

[Braufather]

Talking about 150g to 250 g dry hops.



First brew I had major issues trying to use the hop port as the funnel kept blocking so gave up on that.

For Second brew I dropped them in loose for 3 days, then cold crashed to about 2c. And kept there for a couple of days before racking but got massive astringency issues that I put down to a total contact time of about a week. ( regular brew, never had this issue before with SS brewbucket as didn't cold crash and hops removed after 3 days )



So for third brew, dropped in loose but racked after 2 days at 16c. This time the hop matter caked completely around the pick up filter It didn’t enter the filter but caked all around it, so despite reading pressure to 20 psi it was hardly transferring at all. I have up after about 6 hours with half a keg full.


So a couple of questions


In general I’d be keen to here people,best practises for heavy dry hops with snub nose or appollo.


Specifically, on this brew I’m after a bit of reassurance. There was a lot of foam in the transfer as the beer made its glacial paced way through the caked hops. Obviously it’s a closed transfer and mostly full of CO2 but as I dry hopped loose via the open lid, some oxygen would have got in I guess. With all those hops and foaming I’m a tad worried about oxygenation issues.

pic attached ( probably would have helped if I had remembered to link the filter and float to the centre rod but not sure how much?

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

Just done my first brew in mine (NEIPA) and I dry hopped with about 275g hops.

I used a hop sock with a knot tied at both ends, and I opened the lid for roughly 0.5 seconds lol

 

[Braufather]

Haha I know you are not a fan of loose hops so I may have to try that. I use a SS cylinder with my brew bucket but was looking forward to the ease and utalisation of dropping loose With the appollo

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

I always get astringency no matter how long they're sat in there for and also how many there are. Just not worth risking for me.

It would be nice and much easier if I could find a way to make it work with loose hops. I need about 8 hands when doing it, because I'm trying not to break the chain of sanitisation that I've created

 

[Braufather]

There has to be a way!

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

Please let me know if you find it

 

[Agentgonzo]

I need about 8 hands when doing it

There has to be a way

Have you tried being a spider?

 

[malhal]

Astringency (I.e. polyhenol tannins) is most likely caused by not acidifying sparge water below 6 pH. Common flaw in most pale craft beer. Solve with pH meter and lactic acid. Sparging cold may fix it too. Or doing full volume mash and taking the 20-40% efficiency hit because a thin mash dilutes enzymes too much.

Next likely is it can be caused by not removing yeast before dry hopping. Yeast stuck to hop oils tastes nasty. If you cold crash to remove it then you also remove all the hop oils which defeats the purpose of dry hopping. Cold crash then keg hop to resolve it. Or buy fermenter with dump valve.

Either one of these is likely the culprit.

 

[foxy]

There has to be a way!

Just take the lid off and throw them in, all you lose is a little bit of CO2 as the pressure equalises with atmosphere.
A good read here Peter Wolfes PDF on dry hopping.
https://www.google.com/search?q=pet...i57j33i160.17189j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-

 

[Braufather]

Just take the lid off and throw them in, all you lose is a little bit of CO2 as the pressure equalises with atmosphere.
A good read here Peter Wolfes PDF on dry hopping.
https://www.google.com/search?q=pet...i57j33i160.17189j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-

There is about 80 pages there if I clicked on the right one!

I’ll keep throwing them in loose then but next time leave for two days, cold crash one day then keg. Hopefully this won’t be long enough for astringency to develop but long enough the hops to drop and not cake around the filter.

@malhal. Only had that astringency issue once, so I’m sure it’s something to do with my dry hop method in the snub nose. Have always dry hopped on yeast cake in primary with no issues and I generrally don’t sparge.

 

[foxy]

There is about 80 pages there if I clicked on the right one!

@malhal. Only had that astringency issue once, so I’m sure it’s something to do with my dry hop method in the snub nose. Have always dry hopped on yeast cake in primary with no issues and I generrally don’t sparge.

Worth reading it all, he speaks of temperature and dry hopping, like dry hopping during cold crash.

The astringency will be coming from the amount of dry hops used, one of the pitfalls of making the heavily hopped beers.

 

[Simonh82]

Astringency (I.e. polyhenol tannins) is most likely caused by not acidifying sparge water below 6 pH. Common flaw in most pale craft beer. Solve with pH meter and lactic acid.

I've not come across this idea before but I wonder if it's the reason I've never had an issue with astringentcy from long dry hops. I have been treating my water from almost my first all grain brew and on many occasions I've left the beer on the dry hops for longer than planned. 2 weeks quite a few times and once for 6 weeks, when life really got in the way. Even at that extreme, I never got astringent or overly grassy flavours. They had lost some pop but didn't taste bad.


Now I dry hop cold which I find works really well. I cold crash to 2-4°C for a day or two then add the hops lose for 3 days. I also usually add keg hops in one of those stainless mesh cylinders. Keeping it cold seems to still give great hop flavour and also ensuring you don't get hop creep or diacetyl from extra fermentation.

 

[dtashmore]

I dry hop with whole hops in a bag which I hold up to the top of the vessel with strong magnets, when the ferment has died down I lower them in for a couple of days then raise them again, does this idea help? no chance of oxygen ingress, only issue is that the bottom of the bag touches the brew but not had any issues so far.

 

[dave_77]

I usually dry hop towards the end of active fermentation. When I take the lid off I throw the pellet in lose. There is plenty of Co2 off gassing to keep O2 out. Once the lid is on i leave the sounding valve open for a few hours to let the fermentation/off gassing push any 02 out. Then I leave for a couple days to make sure the hops haven't restarted any fermentation, raise the temp for a couple of days . Then I start a cold crash for 2-3 days. So the hops are in there at max 7 days usually. For the cold crash i making sure there is atleast 10psi on the fermenter and by the time it reaches 3-4c all of the yeast and hops are on the bottom. On the fermzilla the floating dip tube doesn't have a filter on it and I have never had it block with yeast or heavy dry hop. I noticed alot of yeast around the opening once and put a few psi of Co2 through it to clear it before transfer. Sometimes you can have some hop burn on heavily dry hopped beers when it's young but that usually fades after conditioning.

 

[Cheyne_brewer]

Just my own experience here. I made a neipa last September in honour of Her Majesty with OG 1070. 25g Harlequin in the end of 30 min boil then 100g Harlequin & Citra in whirlpool. Another 100g Harlequin dry hop (lid off, throw in, lid on, purge) as the krausen abated. Sat in the ferm fridge in the all rounder and sampled on the day of the funeral. It was glorious but then I got Covid and could neither taste nor smell much at all for 3 months so the brew went untouched. When I finally recovered and had a glass it was absolutely glorious - strong, full body with a background sweetness (mashed at 69c) and pineapple/mango fruit in abundance.

I finally finished this brew about a month ago, and never had any issues with astringency despite sitting on the yeast & hops all that time. Maybe I got lucky - I plan on repeating this brew later this year so will see.

 

[Braufather]

I usually dry hop towards the end of active fermentation. When I take the lid off I throw the pellet in lose. There is plenty of Co2 off gassing to keep O2 out. Once the lid is on i leave the sounding valve open for a few hours to let the fermentation/off gassing push any 02 out. Then I leave for a couple days to make sure the hops haven't restarted any fermentation, raise the temp for a couple of days . Then I start a cold crash for 2-3 days. So the hops are in there at max 7 days usually. For the cold crash i making sure there is atleast 10psi on the fermenter and by the time it reaches 3-4c all of the yeast and hops are on the bottom. On the fermzilla the floating dip tube doesn't have a filter on it and I have never had it block with yeast or heavy dry hop. I noticed alot of yeast around the opening once and put a few psi of Co2 through it to clear it before transfer. Sometimes you can have some hop burn on heavily dry hopped beers when it's young but that usually fades after conditioning.

That’s sounds similar to my method where I got the astringency so not sure where I got it from now? Maybe dry hopping under pressure helps? I didn’t do that

 

[Braufather]

Just my own experience here. I made a neipa last September in honour of Her Majesty with OG 1070. 25g Harlequin in the end of 30 min boil then 100g Harlequin & Citra in whirlpool. Another 100g Harlequin dry hop (lid off, throw in, lid on, purge) as the krausen abated. Sat in the ferm fridge in the all rounder and sampled on the day of the funeral. It was glorious but then I got Covid and could neither taste nor smell much at all for 3 months so the brew went untouched. When I finally recovered and had a glass it was absolutely glorious - strong, full body with a background sweetness (mashed at 69c) and pineapple/mango fruit in abundance.

I finally finished this brew about a month ago, and never had any issues with astringency despite sitting on the yeast & hops all that time. Maybe I got lucky - I plan on repeating this brew later this year so will see.

3 months and no issues???

sounds like harlequin is a decent shout for a dry hop!

 

[dave_77]

That’s sounds similar to my method where I got the astringency so not sure where I got it from now? Maybe dry hopping under pressure helps? I didn’t do that

Don't think the pressure things would make a difference. Could just be the malt bill, hop and yeast choice causing a different outcome..unless it was astringent from the brewing process initially I think it's more likely a conditioning time solution. I have brewed hoppy beers in the past that I have tasted good at kegging, not that enjoyable for 3 -4 weeks and then as the Kegged emptied were tasting great.

 

[Andrew Booth]

I have two fermenter king chubby’s and 2 juniors for dryhopping I santise and fermenter I’m not using and place the hops for dry hopping into there. I force transfer the beer off the yeast into the dry hop fermenter and after a couple of days cold crash and transfer to keg a lot easier if you have two pressure fermenters and a liquid post jumper line.

Last year I did three dry hops on one beer using this method attempting to brew a neipa solely with British hops. Fatal mistake after I kegged it had a couple of friends round who drank the lot of it. One of the best beers I had brewed will have to do it again at some point.

Did a double brew day today so waiting for fermentation fridge space at the moment before brewing again.

 

[foxy]

Astringency does fade with time, but if you can figure where it's coming from and why is a step forward. Most homebrewers I hope doesn't allow to many husks into thew boil and get a water profile right especially when brewing an NEIPA. Dry hops could be the main factor, is it time in the fermenter, amount of hops temperature of beer when dry hopping?
I have posted this article from BYO before but maybe some new comers didn't see it.
https://byo.com/article/neipa-tips-from-the-pros/