Hop Percolator

[FlatWaterBrewer]

Anyone make a small scaled-down version of the hop percolator on the 11-11-07 show? Alan Pugsley from Shipyard talked about it. Essentially you steep your aroma hops for 4 or so hours in 180 F water, and add post (or was it during?) cooling to the wort.

I think I'll try one with a thermos or small beverage cooler next ale. Any idea on how much water per ounce to use?

[Test_Engineer]

I asked basically the same question during the show, but it was never read. I asked what ratio of water in the perc is. No love from Justin.........

[Crut]

The HP we use at TBC is about a 20 gallon setup, when we brew Manitou we use approc 15 lbs-varies depending on brew recipe (14 bbl batch). We sttep the grains for 4 hours or so in the hot water 170-180 ish, then pump the post boil water through it, then through the heat exchanger, then into the aerator into the ferm tank.
So to answer your questions, we do it pre cool.

[FlatWaterBrewer]

Hmm, thats about a tenth of a gallon per ounce. I guess I'll get myself a quart thermos and the next time I brew my American Pale Ale instead of the 2 ounces of cascade at 1 minute I'll try this method out. Report will follow.

[BDawg]

The easy way to do it is to make a hop tea. I've been doing that for a while.

Take a quart of water and boil it.
Turn off the heat, add an oz of your favorite aroma hops.
Let it steep there for 20-30 mins.
Cool it down, then strain it into your 2ndary/Corny/Bottling bucket, then rack onto it.

Works well. I like it better than dry hopping. The aroma goes right into the bottle/keg or you can repeat pre & post secondary.

I'm not sure how the 4hr steep might go. Never tried it that long. I'd be worried about extracting vegetal flavors( unless it's as simple as letting it rest long enough to remove the grassiness). Also, I would advise against adding it to the primary, as the volatile hop aromas will be scrubbed out by the ferm.

HTH-