Do I Need A Hop Gun for My Brewery?

Do I Need A Hop Gun for My Brewery?

What is the Hop Gun?

Hop Gun is performed drying hopping in cold area after the brewing process. 

It can happen in beer fermentation tank or Brite Tank.

Why we need a hop gun?

In the fermenter tank or bright tank, beer is almost finished but has not be fully mature yet. 

Some brewers want to add hops flavor.

 In the way, beer will be circulated between Hop Gun and Tanks until the required degree 

of extraction is reached. 

This process is driven by a gentle diaphragm pump and must take place under isobaric 

and completely oxygen-free circumstance.

Configuration for Hop Gun

How is Hop gun works?

First is Hops Filling.

Certain amounts hops is filled into Hop Gun through a full top lid.

The hops can be pellet or whole hops flowers, which depends on your intention.    

Second is Pressurizing.

To retain the CO2 inside beer, the hop gun is must pressurized to isotonic with fermentation tank or Brite beer tanks. 

The CO2 inflatable head on top will achieve this function by pouring CO2 inside hop gun.

Third is beer circulation.

Both the Upper and Lower Beer inlet is tangential with hop gun. 

One inlet is designed clockwise and the other one is anticlockwise. 

They are rotating in different directions, there will crash together and create turbulence flow when they meet. 

The turbulence flow will keep the hops from collecting at the bottom.

The hops oil and flavour are released. Coarse particles are retained, 

allowing only fine and easy extract of hop particles to reach the beer. 

During beer circulation, strong activity and shear force should be avoided to beer. 

So the centrifugal pump is not available, it is too strong force. 

And the impeller of centrifugal pump will bring too much shear force to beer which is a killer to yeast. 

Another important reason we choose diaphragm pump is it can offer better oxygen-free working condition.

Fourth is cleaning:

The Hop Gun can be manually cleaned or use a external CIP system to wash it.

Hop gun tank drawings