Question on first time dry hopping

I brewed an Amarillo Ale that calls for 1 oz of Amarillo hops to be dry hopped. Following the recipe I transfered to my secondary carboy after 7 days, and added 1 oz of Amarillo hop pellets to a sanitized muslin bag, I also added 3 sanitized marbles. When place in the fermenter the bag sank, now a day later the bag appears swollen from the hops I assume, and it is floating on top. Is this normal? I tried to sink the bag by poking it with a clean racking cane but it just pops back to the surface. Should I be worried or not?

It's fine...Just relax.

nasmeyer said:

I brewed an Amarillo Ale that calls for 1 oz of Amarillo hops to be dry hopped. Following the recipe I transfered to my secondary carboy after 7 days, and added 1 oz of Amarillo hop pellets to a sanitized muslin bag, I also added 3 sanitized marbles. When place in the fermenter the bag sank, now a day later the bag appears swollen from the hops I assume, and it is floating on top. Is this normal? I tried to sink the bag by poking it with a clean racking cane but it just pops back to the surface. Should I be worried or not?

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No need to worry. Dry hopping is really quite difficult to get wrong. Your beer will taste great. I'd be more worried about getting that muslin bag out of the carboy. Most folks just throw the pellets or whole hops right into the secondary. If you're worried about getting hop residue in your finished beer you can pitch through a sanitized muslin or nylon bag from the secondary into your bottling bucket or keg.

One FYI - you might want to leave your beer in primary for longer than the 'recipe' suggests. Give the yeasties lots of time to clean up after themselves and for the beer to clarify. Just my humble opinion, but I think you'll find people on the forum here will leave the beer in primary for 10 - 21 days. Lots of advantages and few disadvantages.

I just threw the hops in the secondary. They floated the whole time. The beer was great. So no worries.

Let me know how getting the bag out goes.

I mean to use a bag.

mramann said:

One FYI - you might want to leave your beer in primary for longer than the 'recipe' suggests. Give the yeasties lots of time to clean up after themselves and for the beer to clarify. Just my humble opinion, but I think you'll find people on the forum here will leave the beer in primary for 10 - 21 days. Lots of advantages and few disadvantages.

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I think I will be OK here, after racking to my secondary it looks like I ended up transfering a fair amount of yeast, I have about 1/4 inch of cake started on the bottom of my secondary.

i tend to throw the hops straight in, worst case you get the odd green flake in your beer which does no damage. I think the pellets tend to break down more easily than the plugs or hop flowers, most of it will end up in the yeast cake.