BrauKon HopGun advice

[craigcarmichael]

Hi,

We've been using the BrauKon HopGun for almost a year now and after a lot of trial and error we have a pretty solid process figured out. We've had quite a few issues with large clumps of undissolved hop pellet being wedged at the bottom of the hopgun after transferring back to FV, so have been trying to find a way to rectify this. The solution we have came up with has been pretty successful, but means that we are not using the hopgun in the way that it was originally intended. Our process at the minute is:

- Wait until beer reaches final gravity/passes diacetyl test, crash to 8c, dump/harvest yeast.
- Purge hopgun, fill halfway with beer under pressure.
- Depressurise hopgun, open lid and add hops under positive pressure, re-pressurise hopgun
- Allow hops to soak for 5 mins, then allow beer to fill hopgun.
- We then apply top pressure to the top of the hop gun to push the entire contents back into the FV. We repeat this step, filling and the pushing everything back into the FV, until we can see there are no hops left in the hopgun by looking through the bottom window.
- We then recirculate, out of the sample port midway up the FV and into the bottom of the cone, for 6 hrs.
- After 6 hrs, the beer is pushed back into the FV, crashed to -1c and carbed right away.

- Our typical brewlength is 25-37HL and we are dry-hopping at 8-20g/l depending on the product.

This method has been pretty successful, but is very time consuming and there is obviously a better way to use the hopgun. I've heard of a lot of other breweries having similar problems with hops clumping at the bottom of the hopgun, but cant really find much info on how to rectify this issue. I am therefore wondering if anyone else has had any similar issues and has found a solution that works for them?

Cheers

Craig

[Filby]

Ive got a hop gun as well and am yet to see a vaild use for it with pellets. If all you are doing is putting the hops into the tank, why not skip the hopgun, pour the hops in and recirculate via a centrif pump? Really struggling to see what the point of the hop gun is when using pelletised hops?

Fil

[dick murton]

You are wasting thousands of pounds worth of equipment by not using it as designed. The whole point of the hopgun is to retain the hops, normally whole hops in the hop gun, and recirculate beer through. So you don't have to strain off all the hop residues before beer transfer.It is not simply a means of blowing hops into the FV. Do a search for Braukon Hopgun and pick up the following you tube video, (A Look Inside The DuClaw Brewing Company Hop Gun )which gives a pretty good description of the basics of operation. Whatever you do, make sure the whole system, pump, hoses, hop gun after adding hops is fully deaerated - blowing CO2 through from the takeoff point of the FV back to the inlet point (whilst of course the beer valves are closed) is essential to maintain beer quality. Claw show pellets, but many people us whole hops. You can also blow back the beer from the hop gun back into the FV if the setup is correct.

[anthonybaraff]

You are wasting thousands of pounds worth of equipment by not using it as designed. The whole point of the hopgun is to retain the hops, normally whole hops in the hop gun, and recirculate beer through. So you don't have to strain off all the hop residues before beer transfer.It is not simply a means of blowing hops into the FV. Do a search for Braukon Hopgun and pick up the following you tube video, (A Look Inside The DuClaw Brewing Company Hop Gun )which gives a pretty good description of the basics of operation. Whatever you do, make sure the whole system, pump, hoses, hop gun after adding hops is fully deaerated - blowing CO2 through from the takeoff point of the FV back to the inlet point (whilst of course the beer valves are closed) is essential to maintain beer quality. Claw show pellets, but many people us whole hops. You can also blow back the beer from the hop gun back into the FV if the setup is correct.

We notice that we get substantially less hop aroma when using the hop gun as designed. Leaving the hops in the hopgun at the end of the cycle results in much less hop aroma. Our current SOP has us running the HG without the candle in the middle. We clean, sterilize and CO2 purge the hop gun. We then open the top, add our full hop charge with CO2 bleeding in via the sprayball entries. After closing the hop gun, we run in CO2 until we are below 0.5% O2 at the Ts connected to the dump and racking port. We take beer in from the dump, through the pump and into the filter connector on the bottom. Beer comes back out via the port connected to the tangential ports and flows back into the racking port. Initially all the tangential ports are kept closed while we allow beer to flow in from the bottom keeping head pressure of around 0.5bar. We allow CO2 to escape from the spund valve at the top until we get foam coming out. We then open the racking port and middle tangential port. This prevents dry pellets floating on top, or sunk at the bottom of the HG from plugging everything. We run the pump slowly, and after 5 minutes or so, open the top port and close the middle port. After 45 minutes or so we open the bottom port, close the top port and continue the cycle until the hops are completely disaggregated and incorporated into the beer ~2-2.5 hours. We then push everything back into the tank with CO2.

Hope this helps. (Yes, this same thing could certainty be accomplished with a far less expensive tank)

Anthony

[CraftAutomation]

We used to use it in a similar fashion to you. We would recirculate the hop sludge inside the vessel though with a pump before pumping it back into the tank. Worked well, except for the one time we collapsed the stainless screen tube in the center. That was sweet.

[AlainB]

Hello guys.

I know that the subject is a little bit outdated but maybe someone will be able to answer. We are currently looking for buying a hopgun. But, after reading this article and before spending thousand of dollars, i am figuring out using one of my filter and dissolving my hop by recirculing it like Anthony wrote above. My question is after transfering the hop to the fv, is there any issue involving filtering? Does the hop tends to sediment in the fv like a dry hopping from the top of the fv?

Thanks for helping me

Alain