Dry Hopping Loose, cheese cloth filter?

I've just recently gotten into home brewing, and I'm only now getting ready to bottle my second batch, which is a PM Pale that I dry-hopped with Amarillo and Columbus pellets.

Here's the thing, before I added the hops to the secondary I read through many pages of discussion on dry-hopping in various places. Many folks suggested adding the hops to a sterilized bag with marbles so the hops would float, others suggested just dumping the things directly into the secondary so they would float around more and impart their tasty oils to the beer.

I opted for option 2, with the thought being that I could use my large double screen filter with a piece of sterilized cheese cloth in it at bottling time. Well, it's about a day before bottling, and I'm concerned about oxidation. My filter sits in the top of my bottling bucket (as it's also used for filtering the hops and spices out of the kettle after I've chilled the wort) and the beer will have to fall into the bottom of the bucket through the filter if I try to get the hop gunk out that way.

Suggestions or thoughts on this? Is using the cheese cloth/steel filter workable, or is there some other technique that would work better?

Thanks in advance.

Wrap the cheese cloth loosely around your racking cane. Then while racking pull the cloth a little so hops don't pack up around the opening and stop the flow. you can also use something like this on the racking cane to keep the tip clear.

The only time I dry hopped so far, I took a hop bag or cheese cloth, doubled it over, and put it over the end of the racking cane. Worked very well.
I don't think I would go with the screen on the top of a pail unless you plan on drinking all of these in a couple of weeks. I assume there would be a great deal of oxygenating with the beer falling through the screen to the bottom of the pail.

OK, good advice guys, thanks. The cheese cloth over the racking cane is so obvious that it didn't even occur to me.

I've never used any sort of filter when transferring beer from dry hop to it's next destination and never have had an issue. I don't even have a cover on the tip of my racking cane. It should be a non issue. What beerthirty posted a picture of is used to aerate wort, so I'm not sure why he posted that. I would stay as far away from that as you can at this stage in the game. That's what I use when transferring from boil kettle to primary.

I just went through this last night, dry-hopped in secondary with loose pellets and had to transfer and rack it. It certainly didn't go well for me, I tried some other advice I had seen and used a stocking around the cane, it constantly bunched up and stopped the flow. Please let me/us know how it goes with the cheese cloth. I gave up on filtering 1/4 way through, now it is a thoroughly aerated I2PA "with pulp".

Well, I plan on bottling Sunday now, since tomorrow is another brewing day (happy yeast working on their starter snack right now) but I'll be sure to post a follow-up, as I'm definitely interested in finding an effective way of getting loose hops out of the secondary with minimal fuss.

Kilted Brewer: don't you run into a lot of stray particles in the final product when you don't filter the beer out? I know a lot of the stuff settles, but there still seems to be a distinct layer of hop scum on the top. It seems like there would still be some in suspension as well.

Update:

I bottled the Pale today using a cheese cloth filter over the end of the siphon hose and it worked fine. I cut a fairly large piece of cheese cloth and then held it with a fairly good amount of space between the end of the hose and the cloth. For most of the siphon it collected very little hop gunk.

At the very end it picked up and slowed the flow, but I just stopped the siphon, quickly threw the gunk out that had accumulated, and restarted. There was a bit of loss at the bottom of the carboy because of the hop silt (it was accumulating too fast in the cheese cloth to make it worthwhile to get the last dregs and there was dead yeast in there too anyway) but overall the method worked fine and was relatively hassle free.

Kilted Brewer said:

What beerthirty posted a picture of is used to aerate wort, so I'm not sure why he posted that. I would stay as far away from that as you can at this stage in the game. That's what I use when transferring from boil kettle to primary.

Click to expand...

Come on kilted! It can be used for multiple tasks. Very few items are uni-task if you use your imagination. Used as I suggested it keeps the surface area of the racking cane larger so the cheese cloth doesn't clog easily. Think hopstopper.

I just found this thread - had a similar question and didn't want to start a new one. My beer has been in secondary for a week, I'd like to bottle this weekend. I see some hop flakes still in the beer, so I was planning on using some cheesecloth on the bottom of the racking cane - but I just wanted to check that doing that would not remove all the yeast that was to interact with the priming sugar and carbonate the beer. Probably a stupid question, but here is the best place to get an answer!

It won't bother the yeast. I would just rack it to the bucket and let it set for maybe 30 min then bottle. Only reason I say that cheese cloth is a rather poor filter if you use pellets.

I use a $3.99 reusable coffee filter that can be bought iin any grocery store. To avoid
unwanted aeration, set it in the bottom of your bottling bucket until you get the flow
going and then it unfortunately turns into a two-handed operation as the bucket level rises, but the filter's nice stiff round shape makes it pretty easy to grip and work with
in general. They seem to be easy to sanitize as well.

beerthirty said:

Wrap the cheese cloth loosely around your racking cane. Then while racking pull the cloth a little so hops don't pack up around the opening and stop the flow. you can also use something like this on the racking cane to keep the tip clear.

Click to expand...

This is actually sold by Northern Brewer as a diffuser for the end of the sparge hose. (to keep the sparge water from channeling through the grain bed in the mash tun).

I agree that many items can be used in ways never intended by the manufacturer.

I've had good results with a bazooka screen wrapped with cheese cloth and my siphon tube inside the screen.

Cheers for the tips - coffee filter sounds like a great idea.