Alternative method to dry hop?

Has anyone/or could this work:

Used a steeped hop tea to dry hop, say a day or so before bottling or just mixed it up in the bottling bucket with the dextrose? My idea was to take a sanitized mason jar, put some boiling water in there, throw in my hops and put the lid on. Let steep until the temp came down to about 80 or so. Then dumper in...

I am asking b/c I never use a secondary anymore. I pretty much hate using a secondary. I usually just wait for my beer to drop clear and cold condition for a few days if I am using a lower floc strain. As you know, dry hopping in primary is a freakin mess. It ends up looking and acting like incredible hulk took a dump in there, plus you lose a lot of beer! Am I just being lazy or what?

Even with putting a lid on that mason jar, you're going to lose a lot of the aroma that dry-hopping is all about. I always just throw whole leaf hops in my primary after fermentation is finished. I put them in a stainless steel mesh ball that works great. It's got more weight that a hop sack, so it doesn't float. Also, you can remove all the hops before bottling and you only lose what little beer was soaked up into the leaves.

I've used hop tea. Your approach will give different results from dryhopping, because you are using heat.

Methods for making aroma/flavor hop tea:

1. Boil in water 5 minutes - much like an aroma add
2. Ditto for 15 - flavor add
3. Your method - flameout add
4. Cold steeping in water or water/alcohol - like dryhopping.
5. Dryhop with some of the beer in a jar. "

jlpred55,
If I understand you correctly, I would say that your idea is sound. You may end up with some hop debris in the bottling process but I think this would precipitate out and settle to at the bottom of the bottles along with the yeast dregs. You can go to this link to see how I sort of did what your talking about except using kegs.

Beer Diary...: "Wet" Dry Hop Experiment

mark
Beer Diary...
Brew School Home Pg1

Why do you hate using a secondary for dry-hopping? What is it that you are trying to avoid?

Suthrncomfrt1884 said:

I always just throw whole leaf hops in my primary after fermentation is finished. I put them in a stainless steel mesh ball that works great.

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Where do you find a mesh ball that's big enough? All the commercially available "tea balls" I've seen are way too small.

Yeah the mesh balls I have seen are too small. I could see making a hop taco thing-a-ma-thing out of a piece of SS screen as working.

Thickhead: I hate secondaries because I am lazy......and honest! Sure I will secondary a beer if it is big and needs some age but I make mostly 1.060 and below beers. They ferment out fairly quickly and I usually bottle after 2 weeks. Most strains I use are good little floccers so I don't ever see the need to secondary.

David42. Dryhop with some of the beer in a jar and blend at bottling. That could work I guess.

jlpred55 said:

Thickhead: I hate secondaries because I am lazy......and honest! Sure I will secondary a beer if it is big and needs some age but I make mostly 1.060 and below beers. They ferment out fairly quickly and I usually bottle after 2 weeks. Most strains I use are good little floccers so I don't ever see the need to secondary.

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Makes sense to me. If you can avoid it, go for it. I guess I like messing with my beer.

I was reading up on hop teas for the exact same reason. Didn't feel like using a secondary. I think the tea works to some extent but I think I am going to use the secondary on my next ipa. I may be making this up but when you leave the beer on the hops for a week or so you will probably get better aroma then just creating a tea. My view is that it is sitting on the beer for a long time and will be able to extract more aroma. Maybe someone on here has experimented with hop teas versus dry hopping using the exact amount of hops in each batch? That would be a good experiment I suppose.

While there are other inherent problems potentially associated with using a cornie keg as your primary fermenter (some will argue the yeast experiences too much head pressure due to the container dimensions) you might consider using one as your primary. at the end of your ferment you can simply drop in a hop bag full of you dry hops. You can sandwich the dental floss between the lid gasket and it will still keep pressure. I add a few marbles to the bag and suspend the bag with dental floss for the last few few days then pull the bag out and transfer into your bottling bucket, no mess and easy. I actually use this method to dry hop right in my serving keg, I have also fermented in cornies kegs by just covering the opening with tin foil.

carbon111 said:

Where do you find a mesh ball that's big enough? All the commercially available "tea balls" I've seen are way too small.

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I found it at a garage sale actually. He had advertised homebrewing supplies, so I went by to check it out. This thing is actually about 3 times bigger than the tea balls.

You could always try this though if you can find a mesh ball of that size. Brew Infuser

Suthrncomfrt1884 said:

I found it at a garage sale actually. He had advertised homebrewing supplies, so I went by to check it out. This thing is actually about 3 times bigger than the tea balls.

You could always try this though if you can find a mesh ball of that size. Brew Infuser

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$35! That's insane, one of these monsters may work for leaf hops.

Amazon.com: Stainless Steel Locking Spice Mesh Ball, Tea Strainer, Tea Infuser, Giant Size 5 Inch Diameter: Kitchen & Dining

Why not just dry hop with pellets?I do it all the time.They just sink into the trub after a while,and you won't loose as much beer as you would with whole hops.

Joos has a good point. Might be your simplest solution.

Here is what I have done with success to avoid the beer loss and mess of whole hops in dry hopping:

I make a batch that is just a bit larger than normal at 5.5 gallons. Ferment 5.5 gallons in the carboy as usual. Rack 1/2 gallon to a 1 gallon jug. Dry hop the gallon jug with whole hops for about 1 week after fermentation ends. Blend (gently decant to keep the hops in the jug) the dry hopped beer in at bottling. I like this method because I am able to gently agitate the jug with the hops in it to get maximum saturation, the aroma is great. I still end up with 5+ gallons of beer, and the hops are pretty easy to get out of the jug.