Dry hopping unfiltered beers

[MikeS]

Hello all-

I am looking to start dry hopping a few upcoming beers and would like to benefit from the collective wisdom here.

At my current brewery, I have no filter and I'm loving it. I am very happy with the clarity level, head retention, and all-around character of my beers. I have lots of experience dry hopping at previous places I've worked but at those breweries we always filtered our beer.

I am looking for tips on how to attack dry hopping on unfiltered beers. I the past, I've always just dumped pellets through a 2" TC fitting on top of the tank, conditioned the beer, and filtered off to a brite tank. With my current set up, I'm pulling the beer off from a racking arm straight to the brite. I've been getting respectable yields and, as mentioned, I'm happy with the quality.

So how are all you non-filterers handling dry hopped beers? Are you successfully just racking off the fermenter? Sock filters? (If so which type and size?) Stainless inline strainers?

Also, how much loss are you observing due to the beer soaked up by the hops?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers- Mike

[brewmaster 2011]

I Crash my beer to 30 F for 2 days. Crop off the hops and what yeast have left over. Transfer and fine my beer with biofine clear for bsg. My beer is bright in 3 days.

[panadero]

I have dry hopped from three to thirteen pounds of pellets in my 10 bbl conicals, and the loss at the high end was about an extra half bbl at the high end - roughly. I wait until 25% OG, close the blow off, and add the hops throught the 2" port. This captures some of the residual carbonation, and loses almost no aroma through the airlock. Yeast activity ensures hops moving through the beer, rather than settling to the bottom. I am not reusing the yeast from these beers, so the pressure on the yeast wont affect the next batch. When fermentation is done I drop to 60 degrees for a day and yeast/sludge off. Then I drop to 32 degrees over a few days, and wait a few days before removing hops. No filter. Beer goes to the serving tank for carbonation, and is clear. A little more time involved, but worth it in my opinion.
Cheers
David

[Matt Dog]

I used to dryhop wait a week, fine and then once the beer was brite I would push it through a 20" cartridge filter 5 or 10 micron. The beer would be bright and the filter would really just catch hop chunks. i did not have a racking arm so I would get hop floaters if I didnt use the cartridge filter. I was doing 14 Bbl batches. If you can wait long enough you can get away without it.

[Ray Hodge]

Dry hoppin

I am newly back in the industry, but in the last 10bbl operation I pulverized the pellets in the blender, reducing effect of sinking and submerging in yeast pack, good results with less hops used, at 1 plato above finish, just as fermentor is capped to hold natural carbonation. Later fined with biofine powder, injected into the suction side of the transfer, on the way to the BBT, wait 3 days as you drop to 32, packages very clear and bright for unfiltered beer and never saw any hop residue of any kind in the bottoms of the BBT. Cheers!

[JustinL]

bright tank dry hop

We put them in a fine bag in the bright tank after blowing it down twice and attach to temp probe. we blow it down once more and fill with c02 and begin transfer. let it sit on there and condition and then carb. I just kegged it off and its still pretty clear. we used 4 lbs of galaxy hops on a belgian ipa and it turned out great.

Justin
Dock Street Brewing

[LaveryBrewing]

ill add my process..
We cap and blow off/catch yeast when close to terminal ( 'close' varies-usually less than 1P left).


add 10-15#hops/10bbls through top PRV.

let em ride for 7 days..around 60-65F
bleed for 4 straight days at 50F (usually only a couple gallons/day)
rack to BBT at 38F
(We installed a standpipe in our BBT for heavily hopped beers and just stopped using finings and have had great results)

we'll loose about 15-20 gallons for heavy DH beers.

hope that helps and good luck!
Unfiltered all the way!!!!

jason

[CSBC]

I am 7 days into fermentation on my IPA. 1.070 OG and it's at 1.014. I turned my glycol unit down, but it will probably only go from 68F to 50F overnight. I want to dry hop. I would ideally like to keg and serve this beer on Tuesday. I was planning on transferring to the brite tank tomorrow and dry hopping and adding polyclar at the same time. Does anyone see any issue with dry hopping and adding polyclar at the same time? Thank you.

Nick

[Gammalyse]

Curious too

I was just about to post something myself and I found this thread. I don't even have a racking arm on my FVs just a bottom port, PRV, and a CIP arm. Any luck on finding a solution for this?

[wailingguitar]

I dump the hops in at terminal grav, wait 4 days, crash for 2-3 days. I then xfer out of the racking arm to the brite. Prior to xfer, I will blow the sanitizer out of the xfer hoses with CO2 from the brite, I then pour my measured Biofine Clear into the hose, and connect it to the FV. This pushes the finings in along with the xfer and results in a good mix that clears quickly.