First Dry Hop

We have a SMASH (single malt and single hop) ale in the fermenter now and at the end of the week we are going to do our first dry hop. I was wondering how folks get the hops bag to sink? The hops are pellets. I was thinking of sanitizing a steel ball and putting it in the bag with the hops. Would that do anything weird to the beer?

For what its worth, I use pellets for dry hopping and don't put them in a bag. I throw them in the carboy and at the end of the dry hopping period, rack the beer out from underneath any hops that are floating on top.

Thanks Pappers! No bag!? Do you find that this makes your beer more cloudy, or do the hops settle out sufficiently to not have an effect? Do you filter your beer?

Pappers_ said:

For what its worth, I use pellets for dry hopping and don't put them in a bag. I throw them in the carboy and at the end of the dry hopping period, rack the beer out from underneath any hops that are floating on top.

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Yep, me too.

And if I was going to use a bag (say, because I was saving the yeast from that batch), I wouldn't weigh it down. From experience I will tell you that getting a bag of hops out of a carboy is no easy feat.

What I do is gently drop in the pellets so they don't splash, or rack into a new vessel over the pellets, and then just let that all sit for 5 days or so. Pellet hops kind of disintegrate, and you can just rack from below the floaters and above the trub, starting the siphon in the middle, with no problems.

A few people have used a sanitized bag over the racking cane to rack, but that has only clogged up my siphon so I only tried that once and it was a disaster.

I'm an old winemaker, and proficient with racking, but with practice anybody can rack pretty easily.

Mountainsax said:

Thanks Pappers! No bag!? Do you find that this makes your beer more cloudy, or do the hops settle out sufficiently to not have an effect? Do you filter your beer?

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I do the same as Pappers and Yooper. I don't typically cold crash before kegging so the beer is often a little cloudy from the hops at first but it clears with cold conditioning. This is a pic of a beer that I was drinking on Thanksgiving, brewed on Oct 26th so two weeks in primary with the last 5 dry hopped, then cold in the keg for 2 wks.

Nice looking beer! I wish I could get mine that clear...

Mountainsax said:

Nice looking beer! I wish I could get mine that clear...

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You can! Anybody can. We have a lot of information on this forum about beer clarity, and when you're ready for that we can help you troubleshoot and get there.

Thank Yooper! We just brewed our 4th batch last week so we are still in the steep part of the learning curve. Thanks for the encouragement!

chickypad said:

I do the same as Pappers and Yooper. I don't typically cold crash before kegging so the beer is often a little cloudy from the hops at first but it clears with cold conditioning. This is a pic of a beer that I was drinking on Thanksgiving, brewed on Oct 26th so two weeks in primary with the last 5 dry hopped, then cold in the keg for 2 wks.

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That is a nice looking beer!

Yooper said:

You can! Anybody can. We have a lot of information on this forum about beer clarity, and when you're ready for that we can help you troubleshoot and get there.

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Definitely, there are some simple tips I learned on here no special equipment required.

What kind of SMaSH are you making by the way? It's a great way to learn about ingredients.

My last dry hop I put the pellets in a grain bag and weighed it down with some marbles. (Did that because I added the bag right into the keg). I boiled the bag and marbles, then sanitized them before adding them in.

Definitely helped me see how dry hops and aging affect the beer.

Carusoat said:

I boiled the bag and marbles, then sanitized them before adding them in.

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It might be a bit useless to sanitize anything right after boil, but won't hurt though

Cheers!

The SMaSH is an American Session Ale (Northern Brewer kit). Simcoe hops, Pils malt.

Do you guys use the same technique with leaf hops...just throw them into the fermenter?

masaba said:

Do you guys use the same technique with leaf hops...just throw them into the fermenter?

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Yes. But they are trickier at racking time, because those little pieces of "leaves" from the cones can clog your siphon. Avoiding them isn't all that hard, and there is a black tip on the racking cane that helps sort of strain them out (unless that gets plugged, too!).

My plan is to dry hop in the keg. The beer is in secondary now. I don't have location to cold crash or I would do that. I could use the kegerator now because it's not full but I won't be lifting a glass carboy into it.

My plan is to use a pellet hops in a hop bag and weigh it down with a shot glass.

brewprint said:

My plan is to dry hop in the keg. The beer is in secondary now. I don't have location to cold crash or I would do that. I could use the kegerator now because it's not full but I won't be lifting a glass carboy into it.

My plan is to use a pellet hops in a hop bag and weigh it down with a shot glass.

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If you use pellets in a keg- use a very tightly woven mesh hops bag. Like this: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/nylon-hop-bag-8-x-9-1-4.html I got a few from wilserbrewer (on this forum) that are even better.

Trust me on that! You will be sorry if you use a "regular" weave or even a paint strainer bag in some cases.

You don't need to weigh it down, but you can if you want.

I've made that kit twice, so I obviously liked it. I'm going to try their conondrum session IPA next though. As for your dry hopping, I just jumped them in my secondary and racked on top of them. I sanitized and put a paint strainer bag around my racking cane. I read on this post that someone had a clogging issue doing that, but I found it to be the opposite. When I did not do that the first time, I had all kinds of crap getting into my racking cane, but with the sanitized paint strainer bag over the cane, it was easy and worry-free. I did the same technique Sunday while bottling a holiday ale that I had some secondary additions to.

eadavis80 said:

I've made that kit twice, so I obviously liked it.
... I sanitized and put a paint strainer bag around my racking cane.

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Glad to hear you liked it and thanks for the tip on the paint strainer bag. I'll give it a try!

I put the pellets in the secondary just before I rack to it. Some pellets stay at the top through the whole process, but most sink or "dissolve". When I siphoned my last 4 dry-hopping batches, I used a muslin bag at the end of my tube, where it's draining into my bottling bucket, in order to catch any large particles. It filtered a decent amount hops and other trub that I accidentally transferred over during the racking to secondary for dry hopping. I haven't had any contaminating issues because I boiled the bag seconds before using it. Anyone else ever try this or anything similar? Or is it too risky for contamination? I probably won't do this once I brew a higher volume of beer.

Yooper said:

If you use pellets in a keg- use a very tightly woven mesh hops bag. Like this: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/nylon-hop-bag-8-x-9-1-4.html I got a few from wilserbrewer (on this forum) that are even better.

Trust me on that! You will be sorry if you use a "regular" weave or even a paint strainer bag in some cases.

You don't need to weigh it down, but you can if you want.

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This is the bag that I have, although I didn't buy it from Northern Brewer.

We already have quite a bit of hop residue in the primary. I have been doing some work on our brewing area and I moved all the equipment, apparently to an area where a mouse found it. There were a few little "gifts" on the bag so we threw it away. Most of the hops have settled to the bottom so I should be able to rack off the top. I hadn't planned on racking to a secondary, I was just going to add the hops to the primary. If they sink it won't be a big deal, but if they float then I'll have to make sure not to be too low or too high when I siphon.

I get those little nylon socks that they give out in shoestores for dryhopping. They are small enough to fall right into a carboy and are fine for dryhopping in a Corny keg too. I'm a sanitation nut so I steep the bag in a small glass of moonshine or vodka to sanitize it. It seems like the alcohol helps the flavor infuse from the hops too. When I dryhop into a Corny keg I put a sanitized wine cork in the bag to keep it floating in the keg. I've had a hop sack interfere with the dispensing tube in a keg.