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infections from dry hopping?

jamier

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I plan to dry hop using my home grown hop flowers, has anyone experienced infection problems from dry hopping, after racking? Or is there a way to minimize the risk?
 
Hops have historically been used as a preservative so I don't think you'll have a problem there.  Also, most of your fermentable sugar has been fermented out by the time you are in Secondary.  The fact that they are home grown shouldn't make a difference IMHO.  I would wash them with water to remove bugs and happy dry hopping.
 
I agree. 
Nothing is 100 percent safe but your hops are as safe to dry hop with as store bought hops.
I would just use them.

If you are really worried, you could soak them is some strong alcohol first.  Something without much flavor like vodka would be good.
 
I brewed an American IPA on the weekend and will be dry hoping it in secondary. I have also done this in the past with no issue.
 
I vacuum seal all my homegrown hops and flush them with CO2 prior to sealing. The trub pile from dry hopping with whole hops is huge, causing a loss of good beer. I grind my whole hops with an old fashioned Corona Mill that I picked up at a garage sale. If you gently swirl your carboy daily while dry hopping, the hops settle into the yeast trub nicely. When you add the hops, the beer releases CO2 as you gently swirl your carboy so your beer is protected from O2. I have never had contamination from Dry Hopping. If you drop you temp to around 60 degrees F you will drop some of the yeast in suspension prior to dry hopping. Using a carboy as primary, when I say gently swirl, you just want to move the hops around, while minimizing getting the yeast and trub all back into suspension again. If you are using a conical fermenter, drop your yeast prior to dry hopping!

Enjoy!
 
RiverBrewer said:
I grind my whole hops with an old fashioned meat grinder ........


Hmmmm........I have a bunch of whole hops I don't like using because they clog up my drainage system. 

Think putting them through my Cuisanart food processor would work for bittering? 
 
I use ground whole hops in the boil, too. The mess of whole hops, wort absorption, & monster trub pile, turned me off from using the hops I grow so I tried the old fashioned grinder (Corona mill). It only takes a few minutes to grind up a couple of ounces, the grinder cleans up quick, and I get to use a couple of pounds of my homegrown hops.

Grinding in my opinion increases the aroma and hop flavor of the beer. The floral essence of the dry hopping is intense and doesn't seem to drop out as fast as using pellets. Late boil additions & whirlpooling benefit, too. I am not sure a food processer will work as well.

I designed an IPA for newbie craft brew drinkers with Beersmith software and it is my most requested beer. It is usually the first picked beer when I pour out severel different samples.
It dry hopped with ground whole homegrown hops. I will try to get the recepie on cloud for you to enjoy, RiverBrew IPA NY
Even if you can't get whole hops, it will be tasty.
 
I like using whole hops in the boil because they form a filter (in combination with a stainless scrubbing pad over the drain port) that keeps trub out of the fermenter. With pellets I run the wort through a fine screen going into the fermenter and still get a somewhat cloudy wort.

The whole hops do absorb a lot of wort, but I consider it a worthwhile trade-off - I really dislike the cloud of fragments I get from pellets.

Grinding the hops sounds like a great idea. What size are the hop fragments?

 
The hop cones get ground up similar to a partial barley hull size. The resiny yellow part is fine. The aroma is strikingly intense. And just to be clear it is an old Corona mill from the 1970's, not a meat grinder. With a strong stir, you get a great trub pile. Just another technique to handle whole hops, but I think you will enjoy the aroma much better than a whole hop addition if you are using fresh or properly stored hops.

My boilpot is 30 gallon with a preboil volume of 18 gallons. So I have a huge flat bottom to make a volcano mound trub pile with pellets, but whole hops are too expansive. It works for my system. Grind the day of boil and the day of dry hopping.
 
I have never had an infection I could attribute to dry hops.  I just weigh the pellets and drop them in.  I dry hop all my lagers with .25 to .5 oz, and my IPAs get a bit more.

The only issue I ever had was when I added dry hops to a carboy that had very little head space. The hops quickly expanded as they soaked up the liquid, and threatened to push out the bung and airlock.  A quick bit of siphoning fixed the problem. Since then I am mindful of head space when I add dry hops. 

Editing after noticing that your hops are home grown.  Unless you can get the alpha levels measured for your hops, in my opinion dry hopping is the best use for them. Assuming you like the aroma.

Remember that at the time when you are adding these hops, most of the fermentable (is that a word?) sugars have been converted, and you've got a measurable alcohol content. So any potential infection will have little food and a poisonous environment.  That all by itself discourages infection, not to mention the natural antiseptic properties of the hop flowers.

You'll be fine.
 
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