dry hopping in keg

well...i did something pretty stupid. i dry hopped (pellet hops) my beer in the keg per the recipe. i did not have a herb ball or any hop bags, so i fashioned a stainless steel hop "vesicle" from a spare 1/2" OD faucet line i had. the recipe called for a 1 oz dry hop...thinking the 1/2" OD ss mesh line could hold the full 1 oz, i boiled it, soaked in star san for a while, crimped one end and proceeded to dump hops into the tube. after 1/2 oz, i realized that there's no way another 1/2 oz was going to fit. so here i am with a sanitized keg, siphon, lines, etc, and a 3/8 oz of hops with no home. feeling as i was pot-committed at this point, i dropped the ss mesh holding 5/8 oz of hops along with the balance into the keg and racked the beer directly on it. (it had been a long weekend with a couple sick kids at home...sleep deprivation coupled with stupidity)

i sealed up the keg, pressurized it at room temp with CO2, put12 psi on it and left it for 24 hours. knowing i needed to do something about the hop floaters in the keg, i picked up a nylon mesh bag from the local HBS thinking maybe i could stick it on the end of the keg dip tube. i sanitized the mesh bag and a few nylon cable ties, opened the keg (with star-san soaked hands), pulled out the dip tube until it was far enough above the beer to stick the nylon bag over the end, and wrapped it tight with the cable tie.

now, aside from the comedy of errors leading up to this point, what should i have done here? should i have just left the hops floating in the beer? is the nylon bag robust enough to dwell in the keg for an extended period of time? what would you have done (other than not put hops directly into the keg w/o a filter of some sort)?

-ssb

I dryhop in the keg all the time. I prefer leaf but with a bag it can be done using pellet. You still get some hop powder in the first several glasses then it clears. For your delima I would let it sit without moving it for about a week then pump it to another keg using CO2. once you transfer it to a new keg it should be pretty clear and tasty.
For your other questions. I use nylon paint strainer bags and let them stay in the keg untill the beer is gone. I get no grassy flavor but only dry hop with 1 oz per 5G. the hop powder tends to stick in your throat a little and lends a different flavor than once it has settled out. hope this helps