What Is Hop Creep and Can You Prevent It?

Following a recipe with the right ingredients and using quality equipment is essential for brewing delicious beer. Hops give beer its unique flavor and aroma. They also determine the type of beer and its color.

Hops are small, cone-shaped flowers that will add a citrus, floral, or fruity flavor to your beer, depending on the type and size of the hops. You can add hops to your cereal mix or during fermentation; adding hops to your brew at different times produces unique results, but adding them too late can negatively impact your brew. As a commercial brewer, you must know what hop creep is and how to prevent it.

What Is Hop Creep?

Hop creep describes hops’ effects on the brew when added too late during the fermentation process. Adding hops during fermentation will enhance the taste of the beer and encourage bitterness to make a brew taste unique. However, hop creep can cause the beer to ferment too aggressively, producing an unwanted taste and potentially ruining a whole batch. Adding hops too late during the fermentation process will cause a refermentation with unfermentable carbohydrates, producing unpleasant flavors and aromas.

How To Prevent Hop Creep?

For a delightful aroma, consistency, and flavor, add the hops three days after the first stage of fermentation, set the brew to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and add seven grams of active yeast. The right equipment, like unitanks, will make it easier to monitor the process and adjust the brew. This is especially important when adding new ingredients while brewing beer. Unitanks are the perfect solutions to prevent hoop creep. Add hops to the pre-fermentation whirlpool to prevent unpleasant flavors and aromas from overpowering the yeast and delivering an incomplete fermentation.

Fixing Hop Creep

Once hop creep happens, you can still revert the damage and save your beer from a catastrophic result. After completing a brew, you can take it through a filtering or pasteurizing process to fix the hop creep.

After fermentation, heat the liquid to 180 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 seconds. You can also heat the liquid for 60 seconds if necessary. The sudden increase in temperature will inactivate the fermenting yeast, destroy any bacteria, and prolong the beer's life.