so in the interest of saving some dough, i've been trying to think of a way to do a hop gun for cheap. here's the general idea-
15bbl brewhouse, so at 3# per that's 45lbs of hops, basically one box worth of volume.
so we get some sort of conical- maybe a homebrew 10gal stainless. we'd take the blowoff hose from the FV and run it into the top of the hop conical, then another hose from the cone into starsan. i figure about a days worth of fermenting should purge the hops pretty damn well just by the volume of pure co2 flowing through it.
then you could just seal it up until its time for dry hop. at that point we just use it like a normal hop gun/cannon/etc. as long as we purge the hoses well, we should be damn near o2 free when the hops go into FV.
anybody see any problems with the general process? i considered the possibliity of krauzen getting into blowoff and down the tube into hops, but as long as its anaerobic i dont see that as real problem. it'd just be a bit of (dead?) yeast going back into the beer when we dry hop.
and i dont see clogging/overpressurization as a problem any more than in normal fermenting process. assuming the hop conical has its own PRV then that'd be two (FV and hop conical) that would need to plug for a blowout to happen.
i think some of the homebrew vendors will customize it for you in terms of port sizes, locations, etc. and id assume it could be done for less than a grand.
seem reasonable? any issues/problems im missing?
15bbl brewhouse, so at 3# per that's 45lbs of hops, basically one box worth of volume.
so we get some sort of conical- maybe a homebrew 10gal stainless. we'd take the blowoff hose from the FV and run it into the top of the hop conical, then another hose from the cone into starsan. i figure about a days worth of fermenting should purge the hops pretty damn well just by the volume of pure co2 flowing through it.
then you could just seal it up until its time for dry hop. at that point we just use it like a normal hop gun/cannon/etc. as long as we purge the hoses well, we should be damn near o2 free when the hops go into FV.
anybody see any problems with the general process? i considered the possibliity of krauzen getting into blowoff and down the tube into hops, but as long as its anaerobic i dont see that as real problem. it'd just be a bit of (dead?) yeast going back into the beer when we dry hop.
and i dont see clogging/overpressurization as a problem any more than in normal fermenting process. assuming the hop conical has its own PRV then that'd be two (FV and hop conical) that would need to plug for a blowout to happen.
i think some of the homebrew vendors will customize it for you in terms of port sizes, locations, etc. and id assume it could be done for less than a grand.
seem reasonable? any issues/problems im missing?
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