Joe & I decided to build our own version of Dogfish Head Brewery’s Randall the Enamel Animal, also known as a "organoleptic hop transducer module".
Joe picked up a whole house filter and I ordered some stainless steel parts. (Amazingly enough, I needed some parts that I didn’t already have on hand. Weird, huh?)
To filter out the hops, I cut to length the (stainless steel) stem from a standard beer keg. It was the perfect OD (outside diameter). I was able to use two short lengths of 1" ID (inside diameter) clear vinyl hose to center it and hold it in place, as well as connect it to the output. Hmm. That doesn’t make much sense… maybe I’ll take a picture or two next time I take it apart…
Anyway, I drilled about twenty holes (3/64" diameter) in the section of stem.
Here it is loaded up with (I think) three ounces of hops…
Here it is in operation.
It causes the beer to be cloudy. The one on the left is straight from the keg and the one on the right ran through the Hopper…
The hops need to be REALLY fresh. Also, you can’t leave the hops in too long (more than a week or two) or you’ll get a really grassy flavor.
We probably won’t use it much - maybe just the homebrew club campouts…
