dry hopping question...

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King MF Midas

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i've been looking at a lot of pics and reading up on the hb wiki about dry hopping and i have seemed to notice from the pics in members gallery that they just dump the hops in and let them float around up top, this seems inefficient to me. i was thinking about putting the hops in a muslin sock and throwing in glass marbles in there to weigh the whole thing down so it rests at the bottom of the fermenter. this means that beer would be touching all available surface area plus the added pressure of the beer on top of the hops would maybe help squeeze some of that hoppy goodness. what do ya'll think?
 
That would work. However, you are really adding steps when you don't need to. You would have to make sure the sock and the marbles were sanitized, whereas with hops you can just toss them in. They will sink eventually (usually). People have been dry hopping by just throwing them in for a long time. You will be fine if you want to do the same.
 
Trying to stuff in and remove a hop bag from a carboy is too much of a PITA for me.
 
The pros just throw them in. If there was a way to extract more flavor/aroma, I'm certain they would use it.
 
In my mind there's no question that free floating is more efficient.

Pellets: Dissolve and expand quickly. I give the carboy a slight shake every now and then and those hops rain down through the wort and then eventually float back to the top.

Whole Hops: They get soaking wet very quickly and while they don't sink, they do submerge slightly. Again, I like to rock the fermenter just enough to lap some wort up over the hops.

There’s no way that a bag containing hops, dropped to a stationary position in the fermenter is going to get the “exposure” of free floating hops.

The only time I bag my dry hops is when they’re going into the serving keg.
 
In my mind there's no question that free floating is more efficient.

Pellets: Dissolve and expand quickly. I give the carboy a slight shake every now and then and those hops rain down through the wort and then eventually float back to the top.

Whole Hops: They get soaking wet very quickly and while they don't sink, they do submerge slightly. Again, I like to rock the fermenter just enough to lap some wort up over the hops.

There’s no way that a bag containing hops, dropped to a stationary position in the fermenter is going to get the “exposure” of free floating hops.

The only time I bag my dry hops is when they’re going into the serving keg.
 
thanks for the speedy replies, i'm just getting anxious about getting my 5 gallon 2 stage starter kit. i sit at work and daydream of making some killer ipa. you guys got me dreaming of a stir plate on a timer big enough for a 6 gallon glass carboy...
 
I use a nylon bag much like the ones used to soak specialty grains when brewing, with pellet hops. I think the utilization is fine, though getting the bag in and out of my better bottles is sort of annoying. You can rack right on top of the bag and then rack off, though, which makes it easier.
 
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