Cold Crash for Dry Hops

Before photo: 5 oz. each of whole organic Summit and Centennial hops after one week dry hopping.

So far, my batches of beer have been good, but the hop aromas have been disappointing. This brew will be different. My second original recipe, Bin Laden's Dead Double IPA, is loosely based on Alan Spirits' HOTD Blue Dot D-IPA. The cake at the top of the fermenter is all lose hop buds, and lots of them. I used a paper funnel to get the hops into the carboy, and about half way through the first 5 oz. of hops, I started to wonder how difficult all those floating buds were going make the transfer to a bottling bucket.

After sunset I hauled the dry hopped brew out to my emptied lagering freezer for cold crashing. I'll lower the temperature by 4 ºF each day for the next week until the probe reads 32 ºF. Some of the the homebrew forums advise this procedure as the best way to get those hops to settle to the bottom of the fermenter. Something tells me I'm going to get a little bit under a full five gallons on this batch.

The second thing I started wondering about as I filled the bottle with those buds, was how I would ever get them out again. A bent aluminum light stand leg might work to pry the buds out one or two at a time. Couldn't take more than a week.  But then I found the great advice online that a bottle washer attached to a garden hose should blast the hops right out of the carboy.