Anonymous wrote:Since the archives are up, I have gone back to listen all the previous shows. During this show, Dr. Scott mentioned putting a stainless fitting in the hop bag to sink it during dryhopping. I just went to dryhop with 7 oz. of fresh, homegrown cascade and the damn bag wouldn't sink with a single 1/2" coupling.
Is the a way to calculate how much weight is needed to sink a specific weight of hops?
I'm hoping as the O2 is displaced and the hops get soaked with beer, they will eventually sink.
7 oz. of leaf hops sounds like a lot of bouyancy.
The bouyancy would depend on the volume of beer the hops would displace. The volume of beer that your hops displace weighs more than your coupling.
The only way I could think of solving this is by replicating it on a smaller scale and actually measuring the displaced beer casued by your bouyant media (hops). In other words, take a hop flower, place it in a measuring glass full of beer (with similar specific gravity and temperature) and note the volume. Push the flower down with your finger until just completely submerged. Hold it for a few seconds and measure how much beer it has displaced, or how much the level has gone up from your initial volume. Then take this measurement and figure out it's mass, or how much that measure of beer weighs. Your sinking weight would need to exceed this mass to sink that flower. Scale it up to your acual dry hop value and weigh it down accordingly. I would acutally just use water for this test just to get a general idea, especially since there are other factors like not all the hop flowers being the exact size and weight, etc. You won't get an exact measurement, just an idea. Plus, after the hops become saturated with beer the bouyancy changes dramatically.
FYI: The weight of a liquid with a specific gravity of 1.018 weighs about 8.5 pounds per gallon, or about 0.07lbs per oz. (very close to the weight of water).
Let's see what Doctor Scott suggests.
