Bottling tonight have a question!

I have an over hopped brown ale in my seconday right now that I am going to bottle tonight. When I moved it to the secondary I dry hopped with 2 oz of pellet hops and now there is a layer on the top about an inch thick. My question is, how do I rack this in to my bottling bucket minimizing the amount of hops that transfers with it. I have tried to tap the carboy to get it to fall which I read to try on here, which did not work. From now on I think I will dry hop in a bag.

Can you not leave it in there longer until the hops settle to the bottom? If not, you may just have to sacrifice some beer in the middle.

When you rack you are racking from the bottom up, meaning anything floating on top will for the most part continue to float on top as the volume in the container decreases. That's how we can even rack carefully under a layer of mold if the beer below is still good.

If you are slow and careful you will get the beer and the hops will stay behind. Consequently if there is a layer of thick trub in the bottom, if you keep the autosiphon above the trub for most of the racking, then you would carefully lower the siphon into the trud, and the beer willusually clear a channel in the muck.

Everything Revvy said I do. I also wrap a piece of cheese cloth with a sanitized rubber band at the bottom of my racking cane/siphon to filter out any particles that may try to get by.

Grizzly, it has been in the secondary for 4 weeks now. I was thinking the same thing, just give it a little longer. Revvy I will give it a try, I am just worried that any motion in the carboy is going to cause a "storm" of hops. I guess worst case I can move it to my bottling table and let things settle again, and bottle tomorrow

Or rack to a bottling bucket. I wouldn't bottle from the vessel that contains the mess you're trying to avoid.

avshockey311 said:

Grizzly, it has been in the secondary for 4 weeks now. I was thinking the same thing, just give it a little longer. Revvy I will give it a try, I am just worried that any motion in the carboy is going to cause a "storm" of hops. I guess worst case I can move it to my bottling table and let things settle again, and bottle tomorrow

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It wont really, and any do disturb will immediately sink to the bottom....If you are careful and relaxed you wil get all your beer out. I mean we dry hop all the time, and you don't really see a lot of people complaining that they have that issue...

The danger of waiting too long with hops is that they will leave a "grassy" taste, that's why I never dryhop beyond two weeks....

If you are already past the two weeks, I'd get over my worry, and just rack it before you have, not a lawnmower beer, but a lawn beer.

I'm pretty new at this. I've only done 30 gallons. Most of that has been IPA (since that is what I really like to drink) I dry hop in the secondary with pellet hops. What I've noticed is that I have a lot less floating mass if I put the pellets in first, then rack on top of them. The first time I dumped them on top and they pretty much stayed there. <shrug>

waldoar15 said:

I'm pretty new at this. I've only done 30 gallons. Most of that has been IPA (since that is what I really like to drink) I dry hop in the secondary with pellet hops. What I've noticed is that I have a lot less floating mass if I put the pellets in first, then rack on top of them. The first time I dumped them on top and they pretty much stayed there. <shrug>

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We did an informal poll on here a couple weeks back..most folks add hops to the empty secondary, then rack on top of it....so you had the right idea..though really both ways work....