What's the best way to dry hop???

Okay, so I'm relatively new to brewing (only 16 batches under my belt), and I've only dry-hopped about 4 of them. I originally tried dry hopping in carboys using hop bags, but it was a total pain in the ass to get them both in and out of the carboy. I have had relative success just throwing whole hops into the carboy and then racking the beer on top of them when transferring to secondary. Still, it is quite difficult to get all of the hops wet enough that they make full contact with the beer, as you can see in this picture:


I've thought about putting the hops in hop bags in a brew bucket and using that for secondary, but my brew buckets are plastic and I heard that you don't want to use plastic vessels for your secondary fermenter (although I don't know if this is true).

Anyone care to share how they've successfully dry hopped??? A picture or two would be awesome as well...

Here's what doesn't work, for me:

- Dry hopping loose pellets in a bucket or carboy: nightmare to siphon beer from, and much as people say they settle, they don't settle fast enough for me (2 weeks and still had two inches of floating hops at the bottom. Lost a lot of beer.

- Bagged leaf hops in bucket/carboy: This bag just didn't want to sink, so by itself this didn't get much contact.

From this, I'd suggest using a slightly weighted bag with whole hops, so you can pull it some time before you rack it out of the vessel, you can let it drain and any trub disturbance will be able to settle back down during that draining time, or a bit after.

One that worked for me was pellet hops in a fine mesh bag right in the serving keg, that works well. Didn't get a lot of flavor extraction, but it was noticeable.

Dryhopping with:

Pellets
Toss into carboy or bucket without a bag. They will sink after 7-10 days. Even if they don't sink in time, simply siphon with a nylon mesh paint strainer bag wrapped around your auto-siphon to avoid any hop particulate uptake.

Whole Hops
Bag them and weigh down the bag with enough marbles or washers to suspend midway in the beer. Toss in a bucket since you won't be able to remove the bulging bag too easily through the narrow neck of a carboy. If this method discourages you, then you could mimic the above method I mentioned for pellet hops, but cleanup is worse.

I dry hop in kegs and wrap the hops in cheesecloth, works great, easy to remove. Hell sometimes, I'll just leave the hops in the keg and force carb it with the hops still in it. Some people say not to leave the hops in that long...I say "screw the naysayers". My 2 cents anyway.

Cheers

ETCS said:

I dry hop in kegs and wrap the hops in cheesecloth, works great, easy to remove. Hell sometimes, I'll just leave the hops in the keg and force carb it with the hops still in it. Some people say not to leave the hops in that long...I say "screw the naysayers". My 2 cents anyway.

Cheers

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So you dry hop straight in the keg without any CO2 pressure on it? I thought about doing that, but someone said that without pressure, the keg would leak and the beer could get contaminated... Is this incorrect?

bobbrews said:

Dryhopping with:

Pellets
Toss into carboy or bucket without a bag. They will sink after 7-10 days. Even if they don't sink in time, simply siphon with a nylon mesh paint strainer bag wrapped around your auto-siphon to avoid any hop particulate uptake.

Whole Hops
Bag them and weigh down the bag with enough marbles or washers to suspend midway in the beer. Toss in a bucket since you won't be able to remove the bulging bag too easily through the narrow neck of a carboy. If this method discourages you, then you could mimic the above method I mentioned for pellet hops, but cleanup is worse.

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I'm thinking about doing the bucket method with whole hops, like you described. Have you ever noticed any oxidation problems from using a plastic bucket as your secondary fermenter?

homebrewbeliever said:

I'm thinking about doing the bucket method with whole hops, like you described. Have you ever noticed any oxidation problems from using a plastic bucket as your secondary fermenter?

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Bigtime myth.

I've had a beer in a primary bucket for 6 weeks and no issues, one of my best.

Psych said:

Bigtime myth.

I've had a beer in a primary bucket for 6 weeks and no issues, one of my best.

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Really??? That would make my life so much easier... What about oxygen in the headspace of the bucket that is present after transferring the beer into a bucket during secondary? Have you ever had a problem with oxidized beer?

Beer in secondary bucket = no bueno.
Wort/beer in primary bucket or carboy is just fine.

I always use a plastic bucket for primary fermentation, and dry hop right in the bucket. In fact, I just opened a a bucket Pale Ale this morning after 7 days and threw in a few oz of Galaxy and Citra.

After another 7 days I will rack to a glass secondary for a week, cold crash for a few days and move to keg or bottles. (fairly quick timeline because its a Pale)

put the hops in the beer...

As already stated: add loose hops to the fermentor, allow 7 days of contact time and siphon off the beer with some mesh rubber-banded over the end of your racking cane/tubing. Easy as it gets.

I dry hop in keg too. Pellet hops in muslin bag, tie knot at top of bag. Tie another knot with teflon tape around the muslin bag knot. Measure about 6-8 inches of the teflon tape and tear. Drop bag in the keg and leave an inch of the tape outside the lid. Put lid on, the teflon tape will full compress against the lid o-ring and the SS.

Sometimes I drop a few sanitized marbles in to weigh the bag down in the keg. I have left the keg at room temp for dry hopping this way. I have also put the keg in the kegerator to chill and left hops in there for 2-3 weeks without any ill effects. My best IPA's have come from room temp dry hopping.

ETCS said:

I dry hop in kegs and wrap the hops in cheesecloth, works great, easy to remove. Hell sometimes, I'll just leave the hops in the keg and force carb it with the hops still in it. Some people say not to leave the hops in that long...I say "screw the naysayers". My 2 cents anyway.

Cheers

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I dry hop in the keg as well I use a womans nylon stocking (the knee high ones). My wife bought me a pack of them for cheap. I add the hops either pellett of leaf add a stainless fitting thats heavy enough to weigh it down so it sinks. I then carb up the keg and drink. Kegs never last long enough around my house to get any bad flavor from the dry hops in the keg.

Brew-ta-sauraus said:

I dry hop in the keg as well I use a womans nylon stocking (the knee high ones). My wife bought me a pack of them for cheap. I add the hops either pellett of leaf add a stainless fitting thats heavy enough to weigh it down so it sinks. I then carb up the keg and drink. Kegs never last long enough around my house to get any bad flavor from the dry hops in the keg.

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Ditto but i bought a muslin bag.

Ive even left hops at the bottom for a month and never had any off flavor issues.

Another thing you can do though that i plan to do is to jb weld a small stainless hook to the inside of my keg lids, so that you can hang a nylon/muslin bag with hops on it and still get them out easily. Its non toxic once its cured, and your beer shouldnt be touching the inside of the keg lid anyways ...

I dry hop using whole hops in the keg that I'm drinking from. I use a muslim bag and I put in hops and a SS nut to weigh it down. I used to use non waxed and non flavored dental floss to tie it off but lately I don't bother, just let it float in there. I also used to take the bag out after two weeks but my last keg went a month with the hops in there and no ill effect. In fact it kept the hop aroma longer. I've never used pellet in the keg and I assume it would plug the tube so that'd be a good reason to tie it off. I did try "hop tea" once with pellet hops and poured the tea into the keg but the aroma/taste didn't last very long. I've also dry hopped in the fermenter and to me the hop taste/aroma was stronger but dissipated quicker than in the keg. Anyway that's my antidotal advice.

My usual IPA routine is to dry hop in a weighted bag (marbles) and add more hops every other day times 4. Though I have a temp controlled conical, I end up using buckets more often and sometimes up to 3 months with no ill effects...

FuzzeWuzze said:

Ditto but i bought a muslin bag.

Ive even left hops at the bottom for a month and never had any off flavor issues.

Another thing you can do though that i plan to do is to jb weld a small stainless hook to the inside of my keg lids, so that you can hang a nylon/muslin bag with hops on it and still get them out easily. Its non toxic once its cured, and your beer shouldnt be touching the inside of the keg lid anyways ...

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Hey, now that's a pretty good idea!

norsk said:

My usual IPA routine is to dry hop in a weighted bag (marbles) and add more hops every other day times 4. Though I have a temp controlled conical, I end up using buckets more often and sometimes up to 3 months with no ill effects...

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Wow, that's good to hear. I would really like to use buckets more often for dry hopping, as it is SOOOO much easier. I know a few other brewers that use their buckets for extended periods of time without any oxidation issues, but I honestly wanted to see how many people on HBT do the same.

My first dry hopped batch, I put the leaf hops in the primary bucket without a bag. On bottling day, siphoning was a PITA, even with a muslin bag around the end of the auto-siphon. I got a lot of bubbles in the siphon line, which I can only attribute to blockage at the end of the siphon that caused air to be pulled in through the (cheap) poorly sealed auto siphon.

Also, these bottles have a lot of sediment on the bottom of them, and my 5 gallon batch resulted in only 40 bottles (3.75 gallons worth).

I just brewed another IPA which will be ready for dry hop in 2-3 weeks, so I'm trying to figure out what to do differently for next time. My current thought is put the hops in a bag (don't know if I should weigh it down or not), and then remove and squeeze out the bag before racking to the bottling bucket.

Use a 5 gallon nylon mesh paint strainer bag to wrap around your autosiphon (instead of a muslin bag). Secure it with a rubber band or twist-tie. When applying the transfer hose, clamp down the spot at which you connect the hose to the siphon (or secure with a twist-tie). This will prevent bubbling and ensure a smooth transfer.

5 gallon nylon mesh bag? I'll give that a go next time, as I happen to have a large nylon mesh bag. And I have to heat the siphon hosing just to get it to fit over the end of the siphon, so that's tight enough already.

Is there anything that can be done about the lost volume of beer due to the hops being loose in the bucket?

VampireSix said:

5 gallon nylon mesh bag? I'll give that a go next time, as I happen to have a large nylon mesh bag. And I have to heat the siphon hosing just to get it to fit over the end of the siphon, so that's tight enough already.

Is there anything that can be done about the lost volume of beer due to the hops being loose in the bucket?

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I am honestly not too sure about this, but I don't think that there is anything you can do. Most brewers that I talk to always expect to loose some volume due to absorption from the hops.

bobbrews said:

Use a 5 gallon nylon mesh paint strainer bag to wrap around your autosiphon (instead of a muslin bag). Secure it with a rubber band or twist-tie. When applying the transfer hose, clamp down the spot at which you connect the hose to the siphon (or secure with a twist-tie). This will prevent bubbling and ensure a smooth transfer.

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I used to do this also. Still had some trouble with hop material collecting at the point of beer intake into the siphon and being a general PITA. Then I had an epiphany (for me anyway) . I used the same 5 gallon mesh paint strainer (sanitized of course), but put it inside my ale pail and stretched the elastic top around the top of the pail. Tossed in my hops, racked beer onto it, snapped the lid on, and let it go for 3 days. Then I removed the lid, lifted the bag, let it drain (just above the beer so it did not splash), put the lid back on for a few days for the fine hop matter to settle out and then bottled. This was by far the clearest, lowest hop material beer that I have dry hopped. No problems with any off flavors / oxidation from opening the bucket several times for this process. I don't think I will do it any other way from now on.

Ok so I'm doing a beer and it said to use 3 whole chipotle chillies. That's it. I'm guess that I should use dry chillies right? I'm not sure what kind to buy.

Brewenstein said:

I used to do this also. Still had some trouble with hop material collecting at the point of beer intake into the siphon and being a general PITA. Then I had an epiphany (for me anyway) . I used the same 5 gallon mesh paint strainer (sanitized of course), but put it inside my ale pail and stretched the elastic top around the top of the pail. Tossed in my hops, racked beer onto it, snapped the lid on, and let it go for 3 days. Then I removed the lid, lifted the bag, let it drain (just above the beer so it did not splash), put the lid back on for a few days for the fine hop matter to settle out and then bottled. This was by far the clearest, lowest hop material beer that I have dry hopped. No problems with any off flavors / oxidation from opening the bucket several times for this process. I don't think I will do it any other way from now on.

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I never had any trouble with the paint strainer bag wrapped around the auto siphon and I've been doing it for years without even the slightest issue. I have heard of people using muslin mesh bags though, and those are notorious for getting clogged up.

Your method seems to be not that much different from dryhopping in a bag, which a lot of people do, albeit typically longer than 3 days. But you are wrapping the bag around the bucket and tossing the dryhops in, whereas others may be weighing down the bag with marbles/washers, tossing in the dryhops, tying the opening so the dryhops and weights don't escape, and letting the dryhop bag "bob" in the beer.

And I know you're not doing this, but I thought I would mention it for any else who is curious. That is, siphoning your post-dryhopped beer through a mesh bag wrapped around your bottling bucket has a huge downside. Here, you run the much greater risk of oxygenating the beer as it flows through the mesh material, and then hits the bottom of the bucket, creating oxygen bubbles in the process.

Leaf in a carboy=Pain in the ass
Pellets in a carboy=clogged pop-lock unless you put a filter over your racking cane.
Leafs in a bag, in the bucket=my favorite, very easy to deal with.

I have put bags in the keg before and that works awesome too.

Don't worry about loss of beer because of the hop absorption. I pull mine out, zip lock bag them and put them in the freezer. Next time I cook meat that is my marinade. Its awesome, try it. Its too bad i have to make 5 gallons of beer to cook 2 chicken breasts.

Dry hopping a bucket (primary) is easiest and has never caused a problem for me. If you are worried about loss to hops, account for that in your recipe and increase the volume of grains.

I dry hop pellets in a bucket with no issues. The key is to cold crash prior to packaging. I find cold crashing in general greatly reducing sediment and improves the clarity of the beer.

Brewenstein said:

I used the same 5 gallon mesh paint strainer (sanitized of course), but put it inside my ale pail and stretched the elastic top around the top of the pail. Tossed in my hops, racked beer onto it, snapped the lid on, and let it go for 3 days. Then I removed the lid, lifted the bag, let it drain (just above the beer so it did not splash), put the lid back on for a few days for the fine hop matter to settle out and then bottled. This was by far the clearest, lowest hop material beer that I have dry hopped. No problems with any off flavors / oxidation from opening the bucket several times for this process. I don't think I will do it any other way from now on.

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I think I'll give this method a go for my next dry hop, but without racking. Most likely I will dry hop for a week, then move the bucket to my bottling location and remove the hop bag (strainer, essentially), and let it sit overnight before bottling.

Another question... for my current DIPA that is approaching FG, should I let it condition for a week after hitting FG before dry hopping, or is it OK to condition AND dry hop at the same time?

It's great to see all of the different techniques of dry hopping here... Next time, I think that I'm just going to throw my hops in a weighted mesh bag, throw the bag into a bucket, and then rack on top of the bag when transferring to secondary. Sounds easy. If it gets oxidized, then I'll know not to do it again. If it doesn't get oxidized (which it doesn't sound like it will), then hoo-****ing-ray!

Don't use a bucket for secondary.

bobbrews said:

Don't use a bucket for secondary.

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I always use a carboy(glass) but what's the big deal with not using a bucket ad a secondary?

Bucket is fine for primary, but there's too much headspace to use the bucket as a secondary. It's even worse to use a bottling bucket with spigot as a secondary. Whenever you open the lid of a bucket to test gravity, add dryhops, etc., the layer of protective C02 is quickly lost. Whereas the design of a carboy is meant to hold a rich C02 blanket atop the beer.

Hop sack in serving keg. Gas line on liquid in and rouse with co2 every other day for 6 days(vent extra gas), ive never had off/grassy flavors when leaving the hops in a keg till it emptys.

This is all underpressure and around 45*