Do I leave the muslin bag in wort to ferment?

I'm using a Mr. Beer kit and about to start my fourth brew tomorrow. This recipe calls for 1/2 oz. of hops in muslin bag. Directions call to add it to the wort in the pot but doesn't mention if I should leave it when I pour into the fermenter or if I should take it out during transfer. With these kits you don't boil anything for an hour like most other kits. I'm guessing you leave it in the fermenter but any advice would be great.

Thanks in advance
Steve

Take the muslin bag out- once the hops have been boiled their job is through.

The only time you'd leave hops in is if your 'dry hopping' (adding hops for aroma) and that is usually done in the secondary.

redpale said:

Take the muslin bag out- once the hops have been boiled their job is through.

The only time you'd leave hops in is if your 'dry hopping' (adding hops for aroma) and that is usually done in the secondary.

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Yup. Redpale is right. Once the hops have been boiled in the wort, they are what are called "spent hops" and won't contribute much of anything to the flavor by leaving them in the fermenter. Everything useful has been extracted. Dry hopping is different because the hops have not been heated (boiled) and thus have the oils and aromatics still in them.

With these kits you don't boil anything for an hour like most other kits.

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I'm a little confused. Did you boil at all? How long?

All you do with these kits is boil 4 cups of water to add the liquid extracts to thin them and mix them together. Obviously these kits remove a bunch of steps and time and I'm not quite sure how they shorten it so much. I'm just not sure how adding hops to a warm wort for a few minutes would provide much benefit. But many of their recipies use hops. Looking forward to getting a more traditional home kit this spring, but until then, its all Mr. Beer.

flounder709 said:

I'm just not sure how adding hops to a warm wort for a few minutes would provide much benefit. But many of their recipies use hops.

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I'm really not familiar with the Mr. Beer kits though I've heard of them. I have a guess that maybe the extract is already prehopped and the hops added to the warm mixture is for flavor and/or aroma only.
You're right that you won't get any bittering effect from the hops without the boil, so flavor/aroma is the only purpose I can fathom for the hops in your kit.

Either way you still don't want a muslin bag of hops floating around in your fermenter (to the best of my knowledge).

I have a Mr. Beer and it's my understanding that because the extracts are hopped there is no need to boil.

matt31 said:

I have a Mr. Beer and it's my understanding that because the extracts are hopped there is no need to boil.

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Technically that is correct. Extracts are just concentrated wort that has been previously boiled at the manufacturer. If there were hops added, then bittering has been taken care of. However, there will be little in the way of hop aroma because the aromatics have been boiled off in the manufactering process. Thus the need to dry hop to get good hop aroma.

I've used MR. B. a bunch. I like to boil one of the 2 cans for 45 minutes with the hops, then throw then other can in for the rest of the boil (15 minutes). That way, the hops still give bitterness. If you boil the extract a long time, the beer gets darker... depending on style, this is a good or bad thing. The boil is for sanitizing and hop flavor. The extract without additional hops only needs to go in the water after boiling for sanitary reasons.