How to use whole hops

My wife and I found some wild hops growing at an abandoned homestead. We don't know what they are but a LHBS said they smelled like Centennial or Cascade. We also don't know what the AA's are so just used them for aroma and flavoring.

My main question is how to best use them. Just made an Imperial IPA with them. I put them in a small nylon bag and discovered they float. Kept pushing them down with the brew spoon to get as much as possible from the hops.

Will dry hop the brew next week and wondering how to best use the hops. Can't push them down so thinking of weighting the hop bag down with a sanitized weight. Maybe I should just put them in loose as I siphon to a bottling bucket before adding priming sugar and bottling. My concern is if the hops float the beer will not absorb as much as t it could if the hops were submerged.

Don't have a clue but that is so cool! I live in Phoenix AZ so the thought of hops growing wild is ridiculous! Good luck! -Jake

If you have any loose stainless steel fittings use one of them as a weight (sanitized of course). Otherwise marbles will work too.

You don't need to weight them down for dry hopping. I dry hop in the pirmary now and I do gently push them down with a sanitized spoon to wet them, but that's it. Putting them in a bag and weighing them down is too much trouble and it's a pain to dig the bag out later if you're using a carbory or better bottle. You'll get plenty of the good stuff just letting them float.

For dryhopping whole hops I put the hops in the empty carboy and then gently rack the beer over the hops as I'm filling the carboy. We have "wild" hops growing out here as well from the 100+ years of commercial hop growing in the area up until 1997.