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Dry Hopping In Conical Fermenter

bribrisprings

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I just built a 1.5 barrel brew system and conical fermenter.  In the past, I was dry hopping in glass carboys by putting hop pellets in a mesh bag with marbles to weight it down and dropping it into the carboy.  I tried the same technique when I used my conical fermenter for the first time and I certainly did not get the same results.  The aroma is just not there like it was before.  Should I forget the mesh bag and just drop the pellets into the fermenter from the port on the top, or should I separate the hops into several different bags with weights to get better contact with the beer deeper into the fermenter?  Obviously there is much more beer per surface area of the mesh bag in the large fermenter.  I also cannot roll the liquid around and shake it up a bit like I could in the small glass carboys.  Are large breweries just dumping hops directly into their large fermenters?
 
bribrisprings said:
I certainly did not get the same results.  The aroma is just not there like it was before. 

How much yeast did you drop before dry hopping? The bag might've just buried itself in the yeast, since it's a deeper slurry than a carboy. If you can't pull thick yeast, then racking may be the solution you need.

I also cannot roll the liquid around and shake it up a bit like I could in the small glass carboys.  Are large breweries just dumping hops directly into their large fermenters?

Got a pump? Gentle recirculation coming out of the racking port and back into the cone is pretty effective.

Bags or not varies by brewery, though in my experience most are just pouring hops directly into the fermenter.
 
I use carboys, and when I dry hop I just drop the pellets in. No bag. The only issue I have run into was when the fermentation wasn't quite complete, with the result being hop bits catching CO2 bubbles and floating to the top. Though after time they settled like everything else and were left behind in the sediment.
 
We dry hop some of our beers at my brewery.

Drop as much yeast as you can from the cone and add pellets straight in the top. I have roused with CO2 in the past but to no added benefit vs the even small amount of extra work. We dry hop for about 5-7 days at ferment temps and then drop to 34ºF for cold crashing. Drop the hops prior to fining or filtration.
 
I add my dry hops to a cup of boiled water making a soup about two minutes before dumping the whole lot into the FV. Seems to help unlock the aromas compared to dry hopping in the more literal sense.
 
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