Dry Hopping and Sanitation

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hiphops

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Ok, so this just may go down as one of the dumbest questions in Homebrewtalk.com history . . . I am going to do my first dry hopped beer; I'll be using hop pellets.

The beer has pretty much fermented out (actually, I haven't checked but I will: the beer's been fermenting for about 1 month now).

Do I just (1) drop the pellets in?; or (2) first spray the pellets with sanitizer and then drop them in?

Seems like I should sanitize it only in the sense that they are going into the carboy, but then again . . . they're hops! Any ideas?
 
Drop them in and give it a gentle swirl.

Why? They are gonna do what they need to do regardless of swirling them or not. Which is coming in contact with the beer, and eventually falling through.

Anytime you've opened the fermenter you've broken the integrity of the co2 barrier, there's a good chance you've introduced oxygen into the vessel. Oxygen + fermented beer = Liquid Cardboard.

Me personally I want to eliminate that risk as much as possible. As much as I say it's difficult to ruin your beer, I still like to futz with it as little as possible. And doing something unnecessary in the overall scheme of things is one of the things I like to avoid.
 
+1 Just drop them in..... disturb your co2 layer as little as possible. hop pellets will break apart and distribute themselves.

Only thing I usually want to touch my beer with once it's in a fermentation bucket is a racking cane on bottling or kegging day

If you want to be anal and sanitize something sanitize the out side of the hop packet and the knife or scissors you use to open the pack with before dumping in. (even that is over kill. I try to do that with my yeast before pitching but sometimes have a few too many brew day and have had no problems)
 
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