hops in a bag?

has anyone ever used nylon muslin bags for hop pellets during the boil?

Thanks

I use a hop bag in all my brews. Several folks out there, including myself, use a paint strainer bag from HD/Lowes/etc.

Kilted Brewer said:

I use a hop bag in all my brews. Several folks out there, including myself, use a paint strainer bag from HD/Lowes/etc.

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I'm one of them. Cheap and re-usable!

yes on the bag for whole hops or plugs... no for pellets.

"For pellet users, a mesh bag is pretty much a necessity unless you have one of those hopstoppers."

guess I should have added I strain off hop pellet residue while transferring from brew pot to primary. never clogged strainer with spent pellets but I have clogged it with whole or plug hops

My hops have no sack. I use leaves and just throw them in the boil and filter out with a bazooka screen. For pellet users, a mesh bag is pretty much a necessity unless you have one of those hopstoppers.

Another great idea for pellets or leaves is here.

We use a bag for pellet hops. Just one less thing sitting on the bottom of the brew kettle. makes my drain happy.

I used a nylon bag for the first time last batch. I will continue to use one for now on.

adamziegler said:

I used a nylon bag for the first time last batch. I will continue to use one for now on.

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I guess these are the little things you pick up as you go. The instructions for the kits (BB) I have done say to add them, but do not mention nor do they provide an additional bag for the hops. A few of the brews I have done have the Bittering Hops, Flavoring (?) Hops and Aroma Hops, so should I be using three different bags for such small amounts of hops or is it ok to just toss them into the boil when instructed? I use a strainer when transferring the wort to the primary which catches most if not all of the hops.

Salute!

I use one of them 5 gallon paint strainers too, but not in the boil.
I just throw the pellets in.

I soak the paint strainer in star-san while brewing, and then use it in the fermentation bucket. pour the kettle contents in, and lift out the strainer.

Same difference I suppose.

I have used the muslin bags in the past with pellets. However my friend Hagen doesn't use any type of strainer for pellets. It all falls out into the trub during fermentation. He makes incredibly clear beer and incredibly good beer in this manner. So much so that I stopped using the bags with pellets as well and it hasn't negatively impacted my brews in the least and it less hassle during brewing.

+2 on bags for leaf/whole, no bags for pellets.

Trub on the bottom of the kettle is easy to avoid with pellets.

For continuous hops additions, rig something like this. This is for an AG setup and a full boil, but the same basic premise could be used for stove top partials:

For my latest brew I decided to try using no bags and no straining from kettle to primary. I just threw all of the pellet hops in and after the boil I just racked without trying to avoid all the trub. Most of the trub ended up in the primary. Its a APA using us-05 washed from a previous batch. I pitched around 1:00 in the afternoon and had activity that night. The next morning it was churning like crazy. It looked like a tornado inside because all of the junk was whirling around. I tried this to see if it is really worth the trouble of trying to keep all the trub out of the primary.

Thanks, This is great info.

My first brew cooking right now, so i'll try bags with pellets