Dry Hopping/Filtering Beer Question

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pcancila

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Being my second time brewing beer and my first time going into a secondary I really noticed how much this helped clear the beer up and discard the sediment versus my first batch. However, I noticed a few issue/questions that I am not sure how to approach.



1. The muslin bag full of hops is floating on top of the beer in the secondary. My concern with this is that only half of the hops, the hops in contact with the beer are contributing to the dry hopping. It may be to late now, but is there a best practice method to dry hopping in glass carboy? Should I have sunken the hops? What is I didn’t use a muslin bag?



2. Going along with the dry hopping; I was happy to see the beer clear up from racking into the secondary and leaving behind sediment, however, I now noticed little bits and pieces of the dry hop leaves have been introduced to the beer and seem to floating around. They don’t seem to want to settle to the bottom or even float completely to the top so I am concerned about them being incorporated into the final beer on bottling day. Any way I can filter them out?



3. One last observation I had is the activity of the beer now that it's in the secondary. I know primary fermentation has finished and it's considered "flat" beer until I pitch with the priming sugar into the bottles. What I am observing now is that the beer seems to be pretty much "stagnant" in the carboy and I worrying that my beer is "dead." However I did notice that there is pressure coming out of the carboy as my S shape Air Lock is not letting the water sit at 50/50, but there is no bubbling. Since this brew is clearer than my first batch, I have nothing to compare the activity of the beer to as with my first batch you could not see into my glass due to the cloudiness of the beer. Should I see some light carbonation? Or am I just worrying to much?
 
1. Don't worry too much about your hops floating. They will all eventually soak in the beer. What I do (even though it doesn't make a huge difference) is sanitize a string and heavy stainless steel washer. I then tie the washer to the bag and let it sink.

2. You can try crash cooling your carboy overnight to get everything to sink to the bottom.

3. The beer should be fine. I'm not sure what you mean by "dead", but once you add sugar to prime it, it'll carb right up.
 
some people like to put a marble or something else in the hop bag to sink it. Make sure and sanitize though.
 
x2 on sanitized marbles in the muslin bag

In order to keep the beer sediment free when you transfer to the bottling bucket, slip a muslin bag over the red tip of the racking cane. I will filter out the hop particles.

As for the 'dead' beer, this is perfectly normal
 
Did you have any differences in the aroma of your beer after you filtered? I filtered for the first time and was really disappointed with the reduction in aroma. Any clues?
 
I just throw the hops in the primary for dry hopping, no bag or anything. The beer usually sits 17-21 days in primary, then the 5-7 days for dry hopping. Sometimes I cold crash at the end, and others I don't. Being careful during siphoning to the keg helps keep the beer clear. After the beer sits to carb up in the keg, it always comes out nice and clear.
 
I just throw the hops in the primary for dry hopping, no bag or anything. The beer usually sits 17-21 days in primary, then the 5-7 days for dry hopping. Sometimes I cold crash at the end, and others I don't. Being careful during siphoning to the keg helps keep the beer clear. After the beer sits to carb up in the keg, it always comes out nice and clear.

+1 on this. It's how I do it, and I put the sanitized muslin bag over the end of my siphon to rack to the keg.
 
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