Advice Needed: Dry Hopping with Leaf Hops

I brewed a ten gallon batch of a pale ale recipe. I brewed the entire batch using leaf hops and my recipe called for 3 ounces of dry hops. I decided to adjust the recipe slightly and put one ounce of hops in one of my glass carboy secondary fermenter and two ounces in the other.

My technique was to put the dry hops in first and rack my beer on top of the hops. In both carboys the hops rose to the top.

Here is my dilemma. The carboy with ounce has good contact with the hops. The second carboy with two ounces appears to have about an ounce of hops in contact with the beer but there is a second ounce of hops just sitting on top of those not appearing to be making any contact.

I've waited seven days and the hops have not settled at all.

My question is this. Do I sanitize my wine thief and slowly push down on the hops to get them to come in contact with the beer?

I havn't used whole leaf hops for dry hopping yet, but with pellets I have run in to simmilar issues. To resolve this, I have gently rocked my carboy back and forth. This causes a good enough disturbance to make the hops sink a little. Do this for a few days, and you will see the majority of the hops submerged.

I'd like to know how to get the dryed fresh hops into my 5 gallon carboys easier. I made a huge mess and maybe got a half a oz in there. I also tried using a funnel but it just got stuck in the narrow part. Useless, Im telling ya.

Loneleigh said:

I'd like to know how to get the dryed fresh hops into my 5 gallon carboys easier. I made a huge mess and maybe got a half a oz in there. I also tried using a funnel but it just got stuck in the narrow part. Useless, Im telling ya.

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i don't think there is a fool proof way to get dry hops in a 5 gl carboy, very slowly is all i can say. maybe us a bucket with dry hopping leaf hops/

hmm... I keg so it's much easier.

I need to think about this. Maybe I need to build sumpin'

I second the daily "rocking" of the carboy. Just a slight rock in each general direction will wet a little more each day. Best thing may be to lower the temp of the vessel and leave the leaf hops in for a couple of weeks. They will eventually sink?
I have noticed when dry hopping with leaf hops, that they tend to sink faster as the yeast falls out of suspension too.

I know this might not help you now, but in the future use pellets. Way easier in every way.

Loneleigh said:

I'd like to know how to get the dryed fresh hops into my 5 gallon carboys easier. I made a huge mess and maybe got a half a oz in there. I also tried using a funnel but it just got stuck in the narrow part. Useless, Im telling ya.

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I cut up the neck off a 2 liter pop bottle so that it fit just over the top of my carboy. Sanitized everything and that allowed me to dump a bunch of hops in and then use my fingers to push them through the small carboy opening.

Robin0782 said:

I know this might not help you now, but in the future use pellets. Way easier in every way.

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This. I don't plan to use leaf hops for dry hopping anytime soon. In regards to my original thread I decided to just leave things be as I'm sure the beer will taste good no matter.

I just put the leaf hops in a muslin bag with a couple of marbles. The whole thing sinks to the bottom and it works well. Getting them out is a bit more of a pain however.