My hoppy beers are good, but I know they could be better.
I’m pretty sure oxygen exposure is one of the last things making my homebrew IPAs not quite as good as my favorite commercial examples.
To try to improve this, I finally splurged and built a hop dropper from 2” tri-clamp fittings.
For its first test I’m going to brew a hoppy west coast pale ale.
If this beer goes well, I have plans for a lupomax Citra/Amarillo NEIPA soon.
What’s a hop dropper anyway?
A hop dropper is a device that allows you to add CO2 purged dry hops to your fermenter without ever opening the lid. Opening the lid to add dry hops adds a small but potentially significant amount of oxygen.
All of the homebrew scale hop droppers that I’ve seen are based on some cobbled together tri-clamp fittings in the 1.5-3” range.
As diameter increases you can hold more hops, and it’s also less likely for the hops to get stuck when you try to drop them in your beer. On the negative side, price goes up quickly with size.
I decided to go for a 2” version for a little more capacity and clog resistance, without spending too much money.
The internet has a bunch of examples of how to build hop droppers. My favorite was this post from hazyandhoppy.com
Parts list
If you’d like to build a similar hop dropper, here’s what I used. I got my parts from a mix of amazon and brewhardware.com.
- 2” TC Weldless Bulkhead $28.99
- 48mm Carbide Hole Cutter $15.99
- 2” Butterfly Valve $33.99
- 2” Sight Glass $26.99
- 3 x 2” TC Clamps $21.38
- 2” TC to Ball Lock Gas $27.00
- 2” TC Blank Cap $4.00 (for covering the bulkhead when the dropper isn’t in use)
(brewhardware.com is great by the way. I’ve ordered from them a few times.)
Total Cost: ~$160 💸 💸 💸
Recipe
I tried to go for a similar grain bill to my Homegrown IPA but my homebrew store was out of Caravienne this time around, so I subbed C20.
For hops, I’m going for a grab bag of favorites that I already had in my freezer.
Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Target OG: 1.054
Target FG: 1.012
Target ABV: 5.5%
Caluclated IBU: 53.4
Calculated SRM: 4.8
Grain bill:
9.5lb US 2-Row (85%)
1.5lb Vienna (11%)
0.5lb C20 (4%)
Mash (Batch Sparge): 148 °F @ 1.4 qts/lb
Kettle Hops:
0.9 oz Columbus @ 60m (~40 IBU)
1.5 oz Simcoe @ Hop Stand (~7 IBU)
1.0 oz Lupomax Amarillo @ Hop Stand (~5.5 IBU)
Hop Stand details: 10m @ 185 °F
Dry Hops:
1.0 oz Simcoe
1.0 oz Lupomax Amarillo
1.0 oz Lupomax Citra
1.0 oz Lupomax HBC 586
Yeast:
2x WLP002 (no starter)
Notes
2022-09-05 - OG 1.051. A little low. Seems I had less boil-off than usual. No big deal, just going to go with it.
Fermenting at 69°F
2022-09-18 - Dry hopped. 4oz of pellets fit comfortably in the hop dropper. I wouldn’t try any more though.
2022-09-19 - Added gelatin with hop dropper. Transferred to keg.
For this brew, I wanted to try crash cooling the beer in the fermenter, but I was slightly rushed in getting the beer ready for a dinner I was planning, so I just transferred it straight to the keg to crash there.
2022-10-02 - It’s been about two weeks since kegging. This is tasting alright but not amazing.
C20 doesn’t seem to be a great substitute for Caravienne. The beer came out lighter than expected. Not a big deal, but worth noting.
The gelatin seems to have not worked for some reason. The beer is very hazy. I wonder if the gelatin didn’t make it from the fermenter to the keg for some reason. I did my usual gelatin addition method, which is to add the dissolved gelatin to the fermented right before transferring to the keg. This has been very reliable in the past.
Taste wise, it’s not very well balanced – too bitter. I knew I wanted a bitter west coasty beer when I made this recipe, but it overshot what I had in mind. The lower than planned OG didn’t help matters either.
I’m also just not crazy about the overall hop flavor which is surprising because I usually love most of these hops. Not sure what part of this I’m not liking. It may just be a balance issue again.
Changes for next time
Halve the bittering hops, and ease up on the dry hops a bit as well.
Simplify the hops a bit. Maybe just citra/amarillo or citra/simcoe.
Go for a bit higher OG.
Caravienne instead of C20.
At least the hop dropper and pressurized keg transfer went well! I’ll be confident to use these new tools/methods in the future.