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Dry Hopping and the Diacetyl Rest

It’s the name of my new novel – Dry Hopping and the Diacetyl Rest. Do you think it will sell?

Probably not as well as The Joy of Homebrewing.

The title of this post is more of a mashup of what I did with my harvest lager last week and this past weekend.

In lager brewing, diacetyl rests are a way to get your yeast to clean up buttery flavors that can be present due to the production of diacetyl by the yeast earlier in the fermentation process. These rests are a period of time where the beer is allowed to warm up so the yeast can become more active.

I didn’t detect any buttery or butterscotch flavors in the lager but it doesn’t harm your beer to raise the temperature towards the end of fermentation.

Following a hot tip (said in a breathy voice – hhhhhot tip) I read in Brew Your Own magazine about dry hopping, I decided to add nearly 3 ounces of home grown hop cones to my fermentor during primary fermentation, which just so happened to coincide with the diacetyl rest.

The tip was to add the hops while the yeast were still active so that there was enough carbon dioxide to keep any yucky microbes from infecting the beer. With home grown hop cones, I thought it was a good idea. They were stored in my freezer but not vacuum sealed and still in contact with air.

With a few days to go in the fermentation, I moved the carboy out of my fridge and let it come up to room temperature which was about 65 degree F in my basement.

Boiling The Mesh Bag

While that was happening, I boiled the mesh bag I planned to use to hold the hops during the dry hopping time. It was boiled on my stove top for fifteen minutes along with some marbles. The marbles were my plan to keep the bag submerged in the bag. If you want to hear something annoying, boil some marbles in a stainless steel pot.

Once the boil was done, I put the hops and the marbles in the bag. I then put the bag in the carboy, which was a fun challenge. It took some effort to shove the whole bag through the carboy’s small opening.

The lager was moved to sit next to the cider I have fermenting.

Fermentation Buddies

After three days, I cold crashed the lager for 24 hours and then I racked it to a new carboy. The lager smelled wonderfully hoppy and tasted okay. Once the lagering period is over and it carbonates, we’ll see how well my hopping did.

Racking the Dry Hopped Lager

Brew On!

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2 Comments

  1. Ryan

    >The tip was to add the hops while the yeast were still active so that there was enough carbon dioxide to keep any yucky microbes from infecting the beer.

    IMO that doesn’t make any sense, surely the carbon dioxide will still be in the beer after fermentation if you don’t raise the temp. And I don’t think carbon dioxide prevents microbes. Though I could see adding fresh hop cones to the beer during fermentation would be beneficial because adding all that loose material is bound to cause oxygenation and the yeast will go ahead and use up that oxygen to help their fermentation instead of it eventually oxidizing the beer.

  2. Interesting point. I read that in BYO magazine – not sure if the intensity of carbon dioxide had anything to do with or what.

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