Tip: Dry hopping in the keg

My wife sometimes gets tired of all my talk about beer making, but she came through with a great idea this time.

So I've got an English bitters going that calls for dry hopping in the keg, which I have never done. I've read on here peoples stories of plugged lines and lots of suggestions to put the hops in a container of some kind. So I figured I'd put them in a nylon bag with a marble, but I didn't want to just drop that in the keg as the bag might get sucked up into the uptake. I've been mulling over in my head how to suspend the hop bag from the lid. I know people have welded hooks on the inside of the lid, but I'm a bit lazy to do this.

I was all set to epoxy a hook onto the lid when my wife says, "why don't you just use a magnet?" Hmmm, I was suspicious that the SS would not be of the magnetic type (it's not), so she said use two, one inside, one out. A quick trip to the fridge indicated that two fridge magnets would work. Then she said, "Don't you have some really strong magnets?" I went and got a hard drive magnet, put it on the outside, and then a bent paper clip (a bigger one) on the inside and it holds there quite nicely! Another beauty of this is that any keg can be used. I don't like mixings kegs and their lids and prefer to keep them as matched sets. This way any keg can be used to dry hop and I don't have to epoxy or weld hooks onto a bunch of lids.

That's one smart chick you got there!

Just make sure no part of that is something that will rust!

yeah, a paperclip is not a good idea because it will rust. You need somthing that is fully encased but still magnetic. FWIW, I've dryhopped in the keg many times and it never blocked the outlet.

One small zip tie.
One 1-gallon paint strainer from Lowe's (et al)
One handful of marbles.
Hops of your choice.


Hop bag stays low, but never touches bottoms.
No metal introduced to your beer.
Beer remains clear throughout serving period.

I was planning on using a zip tie to attach a muslin bag with leaf hops towards the bottom of the dip tube.

Instead of glass marble, I have three 3/4" stainless bearings out of my converted sankes. These are the balls that you only partially see in the top of the valve. After you bust that rubber ring out, it can be removed.

I just tie on to the dip tube with the excess string on my nylon bag. The bag floats a bit, but I just slightly shook the keg every day for a week while it was carbing and seem to be getting a fine aroma.