I’ve been experimenting with my to improve my consistency and to focus on successful wort production that finishes with an FG I am happy with. Those are topics for new videos, this weeks video we do a tasting of two different beers I made while tweaking my systems performance. The main variable change at play is the water chemistry. Its tap water vs. built from scratch distilled water.

I brewed on two different occasions the following basic American Pale Ale:

80% American Pale Ale Malts (3l)
20% American Munich Malt (10L)
1 oz Centennial Hops 60min
1 oz Centennial Hops 20min
2 oz Galaxy Hops 4 day Dry hop in keg

I was mostly interested in seeing how water chemistry effected my SG and FG. I brewed one beer with enough calcium sulfate to satisfy a good mash pH then added enough to the kettle along with some calcium chloride to get a 2:1 sulfate to chloride ratio. The second beer I brewed with nothing more that out standard tap water. (interestingly I got the same mash pH on both beers…hmmm).

The final beers got put in kegs and chilled after a CO2 purge of oxygen. I use 2 ounces of Galaxy hops in each keg using a weighted muslin bag to hold the pellets in the beer and to make it possible to fish the hops out later. I have dry hopped with pellets plenty of times in primary, but I always get particles in the finished beer no matter how carefully I rack. So I tried the hop sack think in the keg.

After 4 days I pulled the sacks out and started carbonating at 20-25PSI. I sampled the beers over couple days to see how the carbonation was coming. I remember being very satisfied with the Galaxy hop aroma. It was stunning. At the shooting of this video however the beers had really lost much of their aroma. I noted that the first sampling pours were very cloudy which I assume to be left over yeast and cold break settling in the keg. Looking at how disappointing the aroma was on both beers I came to wonder what happened.

I actually think what happened was that the all the dry hopped goodness was basically at the base of the keg, because the hop sacks had settled to the bottom and the kegs rested undisturbed. Each time I sampled the beer I was getting crashing out yeast which also had bound up much of the hop oils. The sample pours were tremendous with hop aroma. I really think that I pulled much of that hop goodness out in those first few pours.

Next time around I will change my process a bit. I’ll completely chill the beers first and wait several days for the yeast to drop as much as possible. Maybe even gelatin fining step would help. Then I’ll rack off the yeast or suck that yeast out the dip tube before dry hopping. Separating as much yeast from the beer I hope will solve the lack luster dry hop result.

Anyone else agree or disagree with my sentiment/hypothesis? In some ways it makes sense but in others it doesn’t Only more experimentation will tell!

BREW ON!