Definitely interested even though I’m not kegging right now.
Are you doing something similar to a hop torpedo like in a commercial brewery? Basically it’s a vessel with a set of filters in it that can be fully purged of oxygen and pressurized, then the finished beer is recirculated through the hops via pump prior to fining and moving on to the packaging step.
What I did was brewed the beer with only bittering hops in the boil.
I saved 0.5 gal of my wort after boil and kept it refrigerated/sealed until fermentation was over. I also reduced my kettle volume by 0.5 gal, so what went into the fermentor was 1.0 gal short of typical volume.
After primary was over I siphoned into a keg, and also harvested the yeast.
I let the beer sit until about 10 days before I wanted to serve. At that point I did a whirlpool with all of my late hops that I had held back, added into the 0.5 gal saved wort plus 0.5 gal water. I did a hopstand at 160 deg so I was not concerned with contamination from the time the wort had been sitting in the fridge (about 6 weeks).
I fermented the 1.0 gal of hopped wort with some of the saved harvested yeast, in a separate vessel from the main batch (I was worried about introducing oxygen into the fermented beer).
After fermenting, I added the smaller 1 gal vol back into the main batch, dry hopped in the keg, and proceeded as usual.
As I type this I realize it might seem complicated. But it was easy. I think I will make this my practice when I brew a hoppy beer that I know I want to have fresh at some later point. This happens with me, since I will often brew in advance for a party and sometimes other things in life get in the way of optimal timing.
This could also allow interesting experimentation with different hop combinations used on one base beer from one brewing session.
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Interesting approach. Thanks for sharing!
Yes, I’m glad you posted that! Thank you Sneezles61
