How long can beer be kept on Hops?

[gnutz2]

I'm thinking of dry hopping straight after kegging.

So basically can i leave the beer on the hops for the life of the beer (usually about a month for me) without them giving off flavours.

Cheers Baz.

[Kev888]

Hi,

its perhaps a matter of personal taste - some people feel the 'grassy' flavour can get too pronounced over time, whilst others don't see that (or even quite like it).

I remember reading that it can also depend on the hops - apparently for dry hopping in the keg it may be better to use fewer but stronger hops to reduce the quantity of vegetation going in, and so limit the grassiness, but to be honest I normally dry hop in the FV so can't claim much first hand knowledge here.

Cheers
kev

[gnutz2]

Thanks Kev

I'm asking because i dont use a secondary but go straight to the keg after about a week in the primary, i also need to harvest the yeast from the primary so i dont want a load of hop pellets mixed in there.

Cheers Baz

[Kev888]

Yes that makes sense. I think I've also seen people using a hop bag in cornies and removing them when they want, but I can't find the thread now. Of course cornies can be re-pressurised so not sure how that would go if you're using PBs

If it suited your process though, you could also extend the primary by a week and use a (well sanitised) hop bag with flowers rather than pellets to keep them (mostly) separate from the yeast. I did this quite a lot with IPAs until recently, although now I have a conical so i tend to just harvest the yeast before dry hopping.

Cheers
kev