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Hop straining (I am a newbie sorry!)

markpeyton

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Hey everyone. I am new to home brewing beer and thought I would turn to some others. I love making wine and cider so now I have ventured into beer making. I will basically be making all gluten free beers as my girlfriend is celiac and she wants to enjoy it too.

Moving onto business, I am brand spanking new to beer so I spent some time at my local home brewing store and I picked up a couple gluten free beer kits and got started on them. They told me not to strain the hops but in my homework that I have been doing, I am seeing that you should be doing this. Here is my predicament: I have one batch that is in the secondary fermenter and one batch just went on. Would it be okay to strain when I move batch 1 over to the final fermenter before adding the priming sugar and then when I move batch 2 to the second fermenter. It did not say anywhere in the step by step instructions to strain it but that it would clear up on it's own.

I know this may be a stupid question but I don't want to ruin what I have on right now.

All help and advice is welcome.

Thanks!
 
Welcome to the forum.  Your question is a good one.

Once the beer is ready to move to either bottling or secondary, you should not do anything that put oxygen into the wort.  The only time you should intentionally put oxygen into your wort is right after you've cooled it from boiling temperature to yeast pitching temperature.  At that point the yeast need oxygen to reproduce and build strong cell walls.  The yeast will use up that oxygen during the lag phase.  Once it is past that lag phasee, oxygen is bad.  It will created cardboard flavors.

My whole point is, that straining at the time that you're thinking about straining, will add oxygen to the beer.  When I rack to my bottling bucket or a secondary fermenter, I even keep the hose as low as possible in my fermenter or bottling bucket to avoid splashing.
 
I would think that the racking from primary to secondary would leave the majority of the hops as well as the yeast cake behind.  Then when you rack again to the bottling bucket it should again leave the majority of any sentiment behind.

How are you transitioning from primary to secondary?
 
I assume you are dry hopping but, are the hops in a hop bag or did you just drop them into the secondary. If you are using a bag, just pull it out and let the beer slowly drain back in. Don't splash. If you just put them in without a bag, rack it off and forget about them. No need to squeeze out the beer or whatever you were thinking of doing. Like Scott said. Avoid oxygenation.
 
Thanks for the help. Basically I was told to just throw the hops in the water and boil them in then add the finishing hops and let it sit for a few minutes then proceed to cool it. I made sure the hose was at the bottom of the secondary and wasn't splashing at all. After doing my research I think I need to get something to put the hops in while they are being boiled in the wort which can then be easily removed. Not just throw them in during boiling.
 
Sorry, I thought you were talking about dry hopping in the fermenter. If you are talking about hop additions in the boil then you can just throw them but, if your brew pot has a valve in the bottom it will get plugged when you rack. Mine has a false bottom to catch all of that. If yours does not have a false bottom you will need to pour it through a strainer or use a hop bag. Any of these methods are fine. You just don't want a bunch of boiled hops going into the fermenter though it probably doesn't mater if a tiny bit gets in. It will all settle out.
 
markpeyton said:
Thanks for the help. Basically I was told to just throw the hops in the water and boil them in then add the finishing hops and let it sit for a few minutes then proceed to cool it.
This is all good - after it cools, I pour it into my primary fermenter using a strainer.  Depending on how many hops you use, sometimes there is next to nothing strained out, other times there is quite a bit and I need to clean out the strainer as I get towards the bottom of the kettle.

markpeyton said:
After doing my research I think I need to get something to put the hops in while they are being boiled in the wort which can then be easily removed. Not just throw them in during boiling.
Some people do this, but I don't.  Using the strainer when I described will do the trick, but I would think you could get away with not straining at all (as you did for your first batch) and it will settle out as you transfer from one vessel to another.
 
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