straining hops

i have leaf hops in my secondary for my IPA, and i've never dry hopped before. i'm bottling tonight or tomorrow morning. i have some extra bags i use to steep grains with, will that work around the end of my syphin (sp?)...considering i steralize (sp?) it (maybe boil it for a while?!?!). thanks in advance!

just going to bump this...i want to bottle soon haha

Evan said:

i have leaf hops in my secondary for my IPA, and i've never dry hopped before. i'm bottling tonight or tomorrow morning. i have some extra bags i use to steep grains with, will that work around the end of my syphin (sp?)...considering i steralize (sp?) it (maybe boil it for a while?!?!). thanks in advance!

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I'm fairly new at this also and this is probably no help to you right now, but I bagged my hops before dry hopping for this very reason. I sanitized a muslin bag and some fishing line as well as a couple of marbles for added weight to sink the bag. I made sure it wasn't too big to fit through or to "remove" (it swells) from the bottle mouth/neck. Then I sent it in making sure to wet the hops.

I have read here someone placing a bag over the tube end as you have suggested. make sure you sanitize it. Soak it in sanitizer first. Otherwise, siphon carefully, clean the cane....siphon carefully some more ans then clean again...etc etc.

cool thanks. i asked the question before if its best to put it in a bag or not...the swelling up is what stopped me. so you've had luck with using a bag huh. maybe next time. thanks!

Evan said:

cool thanks. i asked the question before if its best to put it in a bag or not...the swelling up is what stopped me. so you've had luck with using a bag huh. maybe next time. thanks!

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Well as my post said...I am new at this also. I only dry hopped my last brew which is still in bottles and hasn't been finished conditioning yet (so I haven't tasted the final product). But my taste sample on bottling day was great!
I dry hopped by using a sanitized muslin bag. I searched around the forums here and found that this was a common way of doing it. "How to Brew" by John Palmer, online, also mentions this method.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter5-1.html

Why not just put the hops in the secondary for a few weeks and leave them there till they settleor you have the hop nose you are looking for? When you bottle just rack off the sunk hops as though they were a yeast cake? Don't be in such a hurry, if you don't bottle today you'll get to it in a few weeks and the beer will be better.

I have only dry hopped with pellets but I have used a strainer bag on the end of the auto siphon to keep them out of the bottling bucket. I think the way you are describing it sounds fine. I would probably put the bag on the end that goes into the fermenter so you don't worry about clogging the tubes. Sanitize as normal, I use star san and it worked fine.

paulthenurse said:

Why not just put the hops in the secondary for a few weeks and leave them there till they settleor you have the hop nose you are looking for? When you bottle just rack off the sunk hops as though they were a yeast cake? Don't be in such a hurry, if you don't bottle today you'll get to it in a few weeks and the beer will be better.

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well its been in secondary for almost 3 weeks...i need the space. and i used leaf hops and they didnt settle down, i had assumed they would.