Pellet hops straight into the bottle

[Mark Weusten]

I tried a bottle of extract APA that has been in the bottle for two weeks and it was a shocker. Flat, overly sweet and very caramelly. Undrinkable. I couldnt see more time in the bottle fixing that stuff so decided to have a play with it. The 50g dry hop of Zythos couldnt even be tasted. After checking all the other bottles were not carbonated. I opened them all up added another carbonation drop and about 2 grams of cascade hops to each one. Will be interesting to see if they fully carbonate and what the hops do in the bottle. May be one to give to the father in law when he comes round.....Has anyone tried hops straight into the bottle?

[Mark Weusten]

D'oh a bit of googling tells me I have turned these bottles into gushers :-(

[Peter Smith]

that has been my experience so far.....     still that pale ale is going to be ready in about 3 weeks....   make sure you dont get hop muck into the bottles while bottling.

[Mark Weusten]

I transferred the Deeble's Pale Ale to another fermentor with some gelatine and lost about 2 litres as I was very careful not to pickup the hop muck. Its going to be a cracker that brew. Will be interesting to see how much extra muck the gelatine can pull out of the almost clear beer. Bottling this tonight.

[Peter Smith]

it really helps if you can drop the temp to 2C ish   cold crash causes the muck to drop out...  another reason to have temp control.

I set mine to 2C last night but it definitely wasn't clear.   Will make a gelatine decision later in week,  its the best smelling brew I have done this year.

[MrC]

My attempts at bottle hopping have all been disastrous.  All were gushers.  You could try getting the really cold before opening them but I suspect they will gush anyway.

[Peter Smith]

I think the co2 bubbles form on the hop particles and want to get out of the bottle quicker then you want them to.

[Mark Weusten]

With around 2 grams of hops per bottle that probably will be quite fast. Oh well you live and learn....

[vdog]

You might be able to minimise the gushing by letting them condition, then giving them a bit of a shake to stir up all the yeast, followed by a big cold crash to 1C and leaving it there for a week. Getting the yeast into suspension and then crashing should help pull all the hop material down to the bottom and cover some of it up, reducing the amount of nucleation points available when you open the bottle. It won't completely resolve the issue, but could help at least.

[Mark Weusten]

thanks vdog, would be nice to get a few pints out of the batch