Dry hopped pellets won't sink

griffondg · 03-19-2010, 12:27 AM

So I dy hopped my Janet's Brown Ale 2 weeks ago and there are STILL pellets floating on top. I'd say about 75% have sunk to the bottom but the others junk don't want to sink. I'd love to bottle this weekend so as to free up my primary for the AHS Pliny clone I want to brew. I have a secondary fermentor available, but since I started brewing in earnest last year I've only used a primary. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Eric

**Yooper** · 03-19-2010, 12:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by griffondg

So I dy hopped my Janet's Brown Ale 2 weeks ago and there are STILL pellets floating on top. I'd say about 75% have sunk to the bottom but the others junk don't want to sink. I'd love to bottle this weekend so as to free up my primary for the AHS Pliny clone I want to brew. I have a secondary fermentor available, but since I started brewing in earnest last year I've only used a primary. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Eric

I would bottle it. I don't like to dry hop for more than 7-10 days.

**Shooter** · 03-19-2010, 01:13 AM

I agree with that "guy" Yooper. I'd just bottle it. I don't think there will be any problem.

griffondg · 03-19-2010, 02:37 AM

Thanks. I wanted to bottle last weekend which would have put it at 10 days but I was worried about getting all that hop material in the bottling bucket. If I was kegging I wouldn't care because it would settle but since I bottle I was concerned about clarity. Guess I'll just go for it this weekend.

chefchris · 03-19-2010, 02:58 AM

get it cold if you can. that will help them drop out.

**Yooper** · 03-19-2010, 03:03 AM

If you wait until they fall out, you might wait until christmas! Sometimes hops just don't fall to the bottom. It doesn't matter, though. You can rack from the middle, dropping the racking cane as the volume goes down. Eventually, the top will meet the bottom and you can stop siphoning. It's easy, and you won't have many hop pellets that make it into the bottling bucket.

binaryvisions · 03-19-2010, 11:42 AM

You can also filter the hop material out with a fine-meshed bag of some kind. This thread, just a couple links down, has some suggestions including my own recent experience:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/problem-auto-siphon-dry-hopping-strategy-168525/

It'll get the majority of the hop material.

wyzazz · 03-19-2010, 01:21 PM

I put my dry hops in a 5gal paint strainer bag with a couple of shot glasses for weight. Works for me and easy cleanup!

slowbie · 03-19-2010, 01:36 PM

If your carboy/bucket is not sitting where it will be when you rack to the bottling bucket, I would suggest moving it as much ahead of time as you can while still keeping it out of sunlight. Especially if you're not going to strain. I had a similar thing going on and as soon as I picked up my carboy and started walking the movement of the liquid pulled all the hop flakes into the beer. Fortunately I was a few hours away from when I really wanted to bottle, so they mostly settled out before I bottled, but I've still had a hop flake in one or two of the sixish bottles I've opened so far, and I'd hate to think about how many would be in each bottle had I not had time to wait.

**johnnybrew** · 03-19-2010, 02:18 PM

This is an old post, but I was thinking of an idea related to racking a dry-hopped 2ndry. How about putting a muslin bag, or the like, at the end of the racking tube that is in the bottling bucket? You could sanitize the bag and a small zip tie in Star San, then affix the bag to the tube end with the zip tie. Voila! Strains out any hops that get sucked up by your racking cane! What do people think?