Dry Hopping Question

ok, I started dry hopping in my secondary and started thinking about contamination. I boiled a nylon bag and some marbles before putting the whole hops in. Is there any risk of bacteria since there is no way to sterilize the hops?

no worries... hops are naturally antibacterial and I never contaminated a batch with dry hopping and I am at 10+ batches that have been dry hopped

I have never had a dry hop issue. But if you are really worried about it you can soak the hops in vodka (maybe whiskey) to sanitize them.

Whats with the marbles though?

Marbles are to weight down the whole hop cones and get them in more contact with the beer, otherwise they would just float.

Hops were originally added to beer as a preservative so there is no way they are going to cause an infection. As long as the bag holding them is sterile you are good to go.

Tom

Figbash said:

Hops were originally added to beer as a preservative so there is no way they are going to cause an infection. As long as the bag holding them is sterile you are good to go.

Tom

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mmmmmmm.... IPA's:rockin:

madavis25 said:

Marbles are to weight down the whole hop cones and get them in more contact with the beer, otherwise they would just float.

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Unfortunately, I didn't use enough marbles and half the bag is above the water (beer) line. So, I guess I'm only dry hopping with half an ounce instead of an ounce of Amarillo. Oh well, maybe it happened for a reason (staying positive).

i just dry hopped with a one ounce bad of goldings pellets.. of coarse it just swells and floats but i am agitating the secondary a few times a week to unsettle the floating hops and they are slowly falling...


i assume this is fine and I will have yummy beer?

I've dry-hopped with whole hops a few times. I just shove them in and eventually they all saturate with beer and fall below the beer line. Siphoning becomes tricky but what would a real IPA be without some hop particles in the glass?

I really think it's hard to muck up beer after it's been fermenting. I'm not saying one should dunk what's under the kitchen sink in your secondary, but I've also noticed no matter what my methods for keeping sanitized, the only time I've run into contamination was a fermentor that just was refusing to stay clean with any sanitizer. That was a plastic pail with questionable grade of plastic. That made me try and switch to glass only,and I have yet to run into any other problems. I'm in the medical community....and know there's really no such thing as fully "sterilized"...you can only hope for sanitation, and the yeast is more resilient then is sometimes made out to be.

If you throw the pellets in loose, they will float on the surface for a day or so, then break apart and sink. So you don't need a bag to hold them in per se, but I think it does make syphoning the beer off the gunk a pain at bottling. I didn't have a 2ndary carboy free for te IPA i just dry hopped, so the pellets went into the primary. There's a TON of crap at the bottom of the carboy now, not looking forward to trying to rack off the beer into the bottling bucket.....

Thanks for all the info guys. I bottled today and it tastes great. I ended up brewing the Amarillo IPA recipe, only changed it up a bit. I had it in the primary for a week, and secondary for two weeks with the final week dry hopped.

I dry hop all the time. I sanitize the scissors and hop package and funnel. I dump them in and thats that. My last batch I dry hoped with hop plugs. So I had hop leaves to deal with. I put the syphon into the middle of the beer and syphoned from there. Eventually it clogged.

Iv had no off tastes from dry hopping, ever.

Hey now, are you folks dry hopping after a after a third racking like the ole wiki says? or are you actually dry hopping right after racking to secondary with plenty of fermi to go? I've got a pale in secondary that could probably use some more cascade floralness.

I'm sure I am playing with fire, but I have never sterilized the muslin hops bag, mostly due to laziness since it is a LOT harder to get the dry hops in the bag if it is wet. I've done many batches this way and never had an issue.

Good luck getting the whole hops out of the carboy if their in a bag. Those things swell up significatly. I never use a bag and all my dry-hopped beers have been fantastic.