I was thinking today of extracting more aroma, flavor out of dry hop and was wondering if anyone has ever dry hopped in a Cornelius keg laid down? Idea being more surface contact of hops to beer. I would even venture to say (in a CO2) purged keg that laying down and also shaking horizontally and let settle every day for the dry hopping regimine would be beneficial. Thoughts?
I assume that most of us have our hops inside woven bags of some sort, so that would influence the outcome. If the bag is cram packed with hops, it won't make a difference if it is on its side or floating on top. Weighted bags might also influence it, and the fullness of the keg (I fill my kegs until the beer flows out the PRV).
Sometimes, I invert the keg once a day to rouse the hops. A pro mentioned rousing the hops can increase aroma by 25%. It could be psychological, but my inverted dry hopped beers do seem to have more aroma. Haven't tried keeping it horizontal. My hops are in bags. Horizontal wouldn't significantly increase exposure for bagged hops. Free hops, yes.
I've gone commando and horizontal with leaf hops. The conclusion I came to is that there is only so much aroma and flavor available that you can pull out of dry hops. This is why most people who stuff a bag tight with hops go more than a week on the dry hops to get the extraction that they want. Greater surface area and agitation will be more efficient in relation to time but will not create more aroma or flavor than what is available in the hops. The big advantage to this technique is a faster rate of extraction. I toss the hops in the keg, purge, purge, purge, (purge that sucker real good at 30psi to force as much O2 out of the hops as possible) then close transfer and place the keg on its side. I'll lightly roll the keg back and forth with my foot once or twice a day. This has not improved the aroma or flavor of my hop heavy beers but has cut down time to three or four days. If I go more than 4 days with this technique it starts to get those nasty chlorophyll notes.
Yeah, my theory is racking brite beer from primary to a Cornelius keg with a shortened dip tube. Would rack on top of free hops and keg would be purged with CO2. Lay keg down horizontally and shake daily.
Well, anyone interested in trying let me know how your trials turn out. I don't have a homebrew setup anymore, but I'm going to try and see if I can swing something like this at work with a few Cornelius kegs.
