Dry Hop Pellet Dust

How do you filter out the hop dust from your keg? I'm kind a new to dry hopping but I've been doing it in my primary and I get a lot of floaties and dust when I draw from my keg. Even a hop/grain bag isn't fine enough to take it out during the pour.

A couple of days before I rack the beer to a keg, I crash cool the fermenter by placing it in a refrigerator for a couple of days. Most if not all of the particles will fall to the bottom and make it easier to rack a clear beer.

What if your doing natural carb? I'm afraid if I cold crash the yeast won't be there to do there job?

Plenty of yeast is still in suspension. You will not be able to see it, but there will be plenty to naturally carb up that little amount of added sugar for carbonation.

wobdee said:

How do you filter out the hop dust from your keg? I'm kind a new to dry hopping but I've been doing it in my primary and I get a lot of floaties and dust when I draw from my keg. Even a hop/grain bag isn't fine enough to take it out during the pour.

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Then you need to let your beer clear out before transferring it to keg. Best way that I do that is by cold crashing the fermenter for a day or 3, then keg it and let it sit on serving pressure for a week before serving. I don't like to force carb my beers. I had a beer that was dry hopped in the keg once - having hops floating around in my beer wasn't really a bad thing. More hop flavor!

Thanks guys, I think I'll try the cold crash method. Even with the floaters my IIPA still tastes great, the first 4 draws we're the worst and now it's starting to clear up. A little extra fiber doesn't hurt.

wobdee said:

Thanks guys, I think I'll try the cold crash method. Even with the floaters my IIPA still tastes great, the first 4 draws we're the worst and now it's starting to clear up. A little extra fiber doesn't hurt.

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You could do what some people have done - shorten the dip tube so that it sits at least a half-inch from the bottom. I'm not sure how that's done though - cutting it seems risky. Maybe bend it a little? I didn't do that to mine - I just make sure my beer is clear before kegging.

I bought some sure screens that fit on the kegs dip tube but I don't think they are fine enough and you have to cut about a 1/4" off the tube or you can't screw down the keg post.

Just poured my 7th glass and the beer is clear. Maybe I need to pour that first beer with a lot more pressure to suck out most of the crud?

wobdee said:

What if your doing natural carb? I'm afraid if I cold crash the yeast won't be there to do there job?

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You can't get enough yeast out of your beer to prevent bottle conditioning absent filtering the beer or killing the yeast. (note: within reason, of course. If you hit it with a triple dose of Biofine or something, maybe you'd have a problem).

I typically cold crash the primary, then rack to a keg. If I'm going to dry hop, I don't dry hop in the keg (since I want the beer warm when I dry hop), so I just rack off the beer warm, do the dry hop and cold crash on the last two days of the dry hop. The hops generally have settled out by then as has quite a bit of extra sediment. I then just rack off of that. I also brew up proportionally more beer based on the dry hop I'm going to do.