dry hopping without a bag?

In the past whenever I have dry hopped I put it in a hop/grain bag, but my brother was recently talking to a guy at a beer tasting who suggested getting rid of the bag... The thought behind it was that when the hops are contained in the bag they coke in contact with only a small percentage of the beer, where as if you just dump them in your secondary and rack on top of them they come in contact with all the beer as they float down to the bottom. I tried it out with my most recent batch, a double Ipa to see what kind of difference it would make in the aroma.

Any thoughts on this? Is this something that others are doing as well?

I only put them in a bag if I'm dry hopping in the keg. If I do it in the fermenter, I just chuck them in.

I never use a bag, just toss them right in.

enkamania said:

I only put them in a bag if I'm dry hopping in the keg. If I do it in the fermenter, I just chuck them in.

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me too. and FWIW, i've tried bagging in the fermenter and i've noticed it restricts the wet contact with the hops. i like to let 'em just float on top to maximize contact.

That makes sense. So really the only good way to tell if it makes a difference would be to split a batch into seperate secondaries and dry hop one with a bag and one without?

vdub117 said:

That makes sense. So really the only good way to tell if it makes a difference would be to split a batch into seperate secondaries and dry hop one with a bag and one without?

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exactly. in this hobby it's all about doing what works best in your brewery. i'd say go for it, you'll get the best answer that way.

I really doubt the bag makes a difference as I've made a lot of successful IPAs with great aroma using a bag. Also getting loose, soggy whole hops out of a carboy is a PITA

I dumped in hop pellets and they wanted to transfer across to the bottling bucket and then clogged up my bottling wand. The next time I used a rubber band to hold a paint strainer bag around my autosiphon and kept them all out of the bottling bucket.

vitrael said:

Also getting loose, soggy whole hops out of a carboy is a PITA

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hmmm, i've always just added some water and poured them out. even when there's several oz's in there, or large cones like Simcoe, they just pour right out.

I use large stainless soup balls. They are mesh and have enough room in them that beer can circulate through them. They also sink to the bottom right away. I personally love using them, especially when keg-hopping. Since they sit on the bottoms next to the pick-up tube, you essentially draw beer through the mesh ball and therefore the hops.

I've never just chucked them in, though. Sounds like an experiment is in order.

I tried my Columbus/Centennial/Cascade IPA this weekend where I had just tossed the dry hop (Centennial/Cascade) into the primary no bag, and it definitely had the best hop aroma/flavor I've achieved so far. It was a bit of a nightmare on bottling day, tried to rack around them but the autosyphon clogged with hop particles and started letting air bubbles in, then the bottling wand clogged with hop particles. I'm trying to weigh the pros and cons of whether this is worth it or not. The recipe came out good enough that I may repeat it exactly and try the dry hop in a bag next time to see if it makes that much of a difference, so we'll see!

I've done it both ways. If I bag them, I use a large paint strainer bag to provide lots of room. I also put a sanitized rock glass in the bag to weight it down to the bottom of the fermenter.

neovox said:

If I bag them, I use a large paint strainer bag to provide lots of room.

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Yeah I was thinking about trying that, did you have any problems with yeast settling around the bag and stirring up when you pull it out? I was just worried about a bag that big causing too much yeast to stir up and make it cloudy...

I've always transferred to a secondary to dry hop, so there's a lot less yeast to deal with. When I rack out of the secondary to a keg or bottling bucket, I leave the hop bag in the fermenter until I'm done. I've have no issues getting clear beer.

I dry hopped an IPA for the first time last week and was short on time, so I dumped 1oz of cascades in the primary. I then cold crashed it before racking to the keg yesterday morning. I think I will use a bag and secondary next time as I had some problems with hops clogging the popit. I got that all fixed and now I still have a little bit of hops floating in my beer.

vdub117 said:

In the past whenever I have dry hopped I put it in a hop/grain bag, but my brother was recently talking to a guy at a beer tasting who suggested getting rid of the bag... The thought behind it was that when the hops are contained in the bag they coke in contact with only a small percentage of the beer, where as if you just dump them in your secondary and rack on top of them they come in contact with all the beer as they float down to the bottom. I tried it out with my most recent batch, a double Ipa to see what kind of difference it would make in the aroma.

Any thoughts on this? Is this something that others are doing as well?

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I agree that constraining the hops in balls, bags or whatever reduces the hop utilization considerably.
The technique I use is to add whole hops to a Corney Keg loose with a stainless steel mesh tube over the pick-up tube: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/surescreen.html
It provides for 100% contact and an O2 free environment and transfer.

I used to just chuck them in but it clogged my siphon so bad (even with a hop bag around it) that I could not get a nice whirlpool over my priming solution. I also ended up with hop particles that required over 2 weeks in the fridge just to get them to settle out...will probably try a bag next weekend as I have two batches ready for dry-hopping

calpyro said:

I agree that constraining the hops in balls, bags or whatever reduces the hop utilization considerably.
The technique I use is to add whole hops to a Corney Keg loose with a stainless steel mesh tube over the pick-up tube: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/surescreen.html
It provides for 100% contact and an O2 free environment and transfer.

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I like that idea.

calpyro said:

I agree that constraining the hops in balls, bags or whatever reduces the hop utilization considerably.
The technique I use is to add whole hops to a Corney Keg loose with a stainless steel mesh tube over the pick-up tube: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/surescreen.html
It provides for 100% contact and an O2 free environment and transfer.

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That's an interesting idea. Could you sleeve your autosiphon when racking to the bottling bucket or would the sleeve clog up?

Edit: after thinking about it, of you left enough length hanging off the end, you would pull fluid through most of the mesh surface area and probably not have a problem save for possibly getting more fines than you want. I will have to try this out when o dry hop in a few weeks!

Nice to hear some different opinions! I think I'll test it out and see which yields better aroma with my next batch...another question though as someone brought up o2, when racking to secondary are there concerns with trapping oxygen from the empty carboy in when you fill it? Does anyone give it a good swirl to try and force some of that o2 through the airlock or do you keep to the old trusted method of letting it sleep peacefully? I'm sure it's been covered on here before but I'm just curious

Your beer going in should push out nearly all the air as you should have a secondary filled nearly to the top. From that point on you are depending on the CO2 coming out of solution to push the rest of the air out.

rd4 said:

That's an interesting idea. Could you sleeve your autosiphon when racking to the bottling bucket or would the sleeve clog up?

Edit: after thinking about it, of you left enough length hanging off the end, you would pull fluid through most of the mesh surface area and probably not have a problem save for possibly getting more fines than you want. I will have to try this out when o dry hop in a few weeks!

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The Surescreen is designed to slip over a racking cane. It may not work with an autosiphon.