Beer Forum

So I learned an important, yet seemingly obvious lesson. I had decided to brew a Pliny clone since it's probably my favorite beer. Of the many options (Tasty's clone, Vinnie's recipe, Jamil's clone), I settled on going with Jamil's but with Tasty's water profile. The grain bill was all 2 row with 1/2 pound of wheat. Anyways, I was able to get Centennial, Simcoe and Chinook whole hops from freshhops.com for pretty darn cheap, so I thought I would use mostly whole leaf since my experience in the past has been very good, especially for aroma hops. But man do they suck up lots of wort. I didn't really put much thought into what an incredible amount of wort 12 oz of whole hops would consume (plus another 6 oz of pellets). I just racked to the keg, and it's a great beer but man I wish there were more. I'm not sure if I got much more than 3 gallons out after ending the boil with just under 6. Oops.

Well now we all know to look out for the same thing. Thanks for spreading the knowledge.

Check out this thread. although scary way to strain the wort ou of the hops, Tom has never had a batch go bad.
http://www.musiccitybrewers.com/forums/ ... p?f=8&t=72

I don't have his recipe in front of me right now, but I do remember something in Vinnie's recipe warning about this problem. When I brewed it I started with a preboil volume of 8 gallons so I could end up with about 5 gallons in the fermenter. I didn't have my big pot then so I boiled most of it on my turkey fryer and the rest on top of the stove. Once enough volume had boiled off I combined the two in the turkey fryer pot.

Wayne

This (among other reasons) is why I grind my whole hops into a powder with a coffee grinder just before using them. This way they act just like pellets in the boil.

herbaljoe wrote:This (among other reasons) is why I grind my whole hops into a powder with a coffee grinder just before using them. This way they act just like pellets in the boil.

What kind of grinder? Pliny has over a pound of hops. Seems pretty tedious if your using the grinder I'm think of.

On a side note, I use a huge hop bag when making my Pliny clone. Worked great!

UnaHopper wrote:

herbaljoe wrote:This (among other reasons) is why I grind my whole hops into a powder with a coffee grinder just before using them. This way they act just like pellets in the boil.

What kind of grinder? Pliny has over a pound of hops. Seems pretty tedious if your using the grinder I'm think of.

On a side note, I use a huge hop bag when making my Pliny clone. Worked great!

Do you worry about lower utilization and extraction of aroma compounds being the bag?

UnaHopper wrote:

herbaljoe wrote:This (among other reasons) is why I grind my whole hops into a powder with a coffee grinder just before using them. This way they act just like pellets in the boil.

What kind of grinder? Pliny has over a pound of hops. Seems pretty tedious if your using the grinder I'm think of.

On a side note, I use a huge hop bag when making my Pliny clone. Worked great!

Sure, a hop back works great too. I just don't like knowing I'm getting less utilization with that method.

And yeah, the grinding process is a little tedious. I can fit about .5 oz in the grinder at a time. It's not bad though. And I usually only use a few ounces of whole hops, the rest are pellets.