VirginiaHops1
Well-Known Member
The thing about the hop storage temp though is how often from harvest to hitting people's beer has the hops been sitting at room temps(or worse)? Probably alot unless you're picking them up from the hop supplier directly with a cooler. So I'm not sure how much damage having them in an O2 purged keg for a couple days is doing. I soak up as much research/anecdotal evidence/data as possible but at the end of the day my be all/end all is just testing it on my system and drinking the beer, which I why I've done various methods and continue to experiment. When someone has only done something one way but swears it's the optimal method I wonder how they've so confidently reached that conclusion.Research shows that storage temp up to a point is more important then low do. I wouldnt say my beers are top tier but I do notice when the hops have had a considerably negative impact. I always brew 4 kegs at the same time for comparison experiments. They usually finish in about 2-3 weeks. I couldnt detect any difference with the keg that I had to open. I think there is a limit to how much DO liquid can uptake at a certain temp if you dont stir or splash it alot.
On the other hand, I had once a ball lock that was missing a rubber and when I transferred the beer to serving keg it was totally dead the next day.
Again, I'm not touting either method and at some point I'll probably decide what I like best. I haven't had a chance to do alot of side by side fermentations to test out variables because I switch my recipes up so much and never want to do the same one twice.