Dealing with floating hops

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beertroll

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It's my first time dry-hopping with whole hops, and I made the mistake of not racking on top of them. I usually use pellet hops, and I bag them with a couple of stainless steel wingnuts to keep them from floating, but this time I just added the whole hops loose. I figured that they would get beerlogged and partially submerge, but that isn't happening. Most of the hops are still floating on the surface, above the liquid. It's taking "dry hopping" a bit too literally. I was able to tamp down some of them with my wine thief, but I can't reach the majority of them. Any suggestions to fix this, or is this just a mistake I need to learn from in the future?
 
Racking can to push them down? If this is in a carboy its not going to be fun. I wouldn't really worry about and and next time weigh them down.
 
Next time definitely use a Muslin bag. HOWEVER, they are going to float either way, and the oils are going to be extracted either way. You're good!
 
Next time definitely use a Muslin bag. HOWEVER, they are going to float either way, and the oils are going to be extracted either way. You're good!

You can add sanitized marbles/wingnuts/etc to the bag to weigh it down, although that's still a next time thing. If you can find a plate or something similar just slightly smaller in diameter than the bucket, you can just place it directly on top of the wort to push the hops down a little.
 
Racking can to push them down? If this is in a carboy its not going to be fun. I wouldn't really worry about and and next time weigh them down.

Yeah, it's a carboy. I didn't think of a racking cane, as I use an autosiphon. That's a good idea.

TopherM said:
Next time definitely use a Muslin bag. HOWEVER, they are going to float either way, and the oils are going to be extracted either way. You're good!

I hope so. The bulk are actually completely above the surface of the beer. I'd be fine with it if they were just floating near the surface.
 
I didn't think of a racking cane, as I use an autosiphon..

Just remove the interior piece of the autosiphon as use that, it's just a racking cane with a gasket. Should be able to get into the corners an auto-siphon can't get to.
 
I did the same thing recently and it turned out fine. However, cleaning the carboy was a bit of a mess. My next dry hopping attempt was with pellets and they worked better because they all were wet (soaked up the beer), where as the cones were still dry on the top. The pellet attempt was much easier to clean too.

Mark
 
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