Sanitation concerns when dry hopping?

I am brewing an IPA right now and it is in primary fermentation. In the recipe it calls for dry hopping 1oz. of cascades. I am always pariniod about contaminating my brew, and I have never dry hopped before. I plan on dry hopping in my carboy.

1) Should I be worried about my hand touching the hops or the hops having bacteria on them?

2) Any one have an advice on dry hopping in general?

3) I am new to HomeBrewTalk and any advice would be greatly appreciated, and i am using pellets.

Cheers

Hops are antibacterial, that's why they were used as a preservative so your hand won't contaminate them, just don't breathe heavily into your fermenter while you are doing it, haha. Other than that some people use bags, I just toss them in loose. Your choice really.

AaronR77 said:

I am brewing an IPA right now and it is in primary fermentation. In the recipe it calls for dry hopping 1oz. of cascades. I am always pariniod about contaminating my brew, and I have never dry hopped before. I plan on dry hopping in my carboy.

1) Should I be worried about my hand touching the hops or the hops having bacteria on them?

2) Any one have an advice on dry hopping in general?

3) I am new to HomeBrewTalk and any advice would be greatly appreciated, and i am using pellets.

Cheers

Click to expand...

There's a ton of info about dry hopping here at the HBT forums. The search function works pretty well but questions are ALWAYS welcome. Just be prepared, there's a bunch of sarcastic folks here...

1) I always wash my hands when handling my ingredients and the like. Hops are naturally antiseptic so there's virtually no concern for infection, but good process/practices will help you along the way.
2) I use pellets and whole cones. I simply pull the plug/cap off my carboy and dump the hops right in. I just rack to my bottling bucket or keg straight off the primary. Some people prefer racking to secondary/clearing tank before going to storage, but that's a matter of preference. Do a search on secondaries to read all the info about the pros/cons. As for the amount of hops and how long, it's a matter of preference and style. Most will tell you not to hop for more than 10 days due to a grassy flavor that might be imparted. I've not had that problem (yet). I'd simply recommend leaving the hops in the beer for varying lengths to see what the effects are and go from there. I'd say a good rule of thumb is ~4-8 days.
3) see the into comments.:rockin:

thanks for the quick response. I'm glad I joined this site seems like a great place to become a better brewer. peace

AaronR77 said:

I am brewing an IPA right now and it is in primary fermentation. In the recipe it calls for dry hopping 1oz. of cascades. I am always pariniod about contaminating my brew, and I have never dry hopped before. I plan on dry hopping in my carboy.

1) Should I be worried about my hand touching the hops or the hops having bacteria on them?

2) Any one have an advice on dry hopping in general?

3) I am new to HomeBrewTalk and any advice would be greatly appreciated, and i am using pellets.

Cheers

Click to expand...

The other two posters gave you good advice on dry hopping, in my opinion, so I won't try to add anything there. I'm just stopping by to tell you welcome and let you know that contamination is very very VERY rare. And even then, you may just lose a couple of bottles out of an entire batch. And even then, the beer may still be drinkable. Read this if you haven't already:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/think-you-ruined-your-beer-set-your-fears-aside-74520/