Dry hopping while carbing

We just put an ESB in the keg to chill before carbing. SWMBO saw a quarter ounce of cluster hops in the fridge so we put it in a hop ball and into the keg. Will this have much of an effect on the beer?

Sure, it'll add some aroma and a bit of flavor.

But I wouldn't start carbing just yet. When you purge the keg to remove the ball you'll lose a lot of the volatile aroma compunds. Just hit it with enough gas to seal and remove the ball 3-7 days after you added it. 3 days if you want just aroma or 7+ days if you like the vegetatitve green flavor associated with long dry hopping... the latter seems appropriate for an ESB.

I dropped a nylon mesh bag of Cascade whole hops (I wanna say a full two ounces) into the keg, sealed it up, set the pressure to carb over 3 days, and left it in there while I went through the keg...Had it in there until the keg finished off, about 6 weeks. Delicious to nearly the end; when I got major cloudy hop floaties and stuff in my beers. Otherwise, no issues and I loved the "set it and forgot it" simplicity.

i dry hop in the keg all the time - the lower temps will take longer to extract the aroma so you can leave in for the duration of the keg without vegetal/grassy flavors

aside from the initial purge of air after sealing you shouldn't need to vent your keg at all so no worries about releasing the aroma that way

Good to know. Hossman - it's too bad the nylon bag didn't catch all the bits and pieces. Any ideas on how to improve this? I have a bunch of muslin cloth laying around - I may try this but triple wrap the hops...