Dry hopping with fresh hops

How do I make sure that I'm not throwing in any bacteria? Do I run the hops under hot water? I'm sure boiling them will not do any justice. I have about 2 oz's of Nugget I am going to throw in my primary. This is my first time dry hopping so I want to make sure I am safe.

Don't dry hop while primary fermentation is going on. Rack the beer into a secondary then dry hop.

I sanitize the bag and marbles I place in the bag to keep them from floating on the top but not the hops themselves. They are a natural preservative and infection shouldn't be an issue.

I wasn't going to rack this one into a secondary. Was actually going to dry hop after fermentation was complete. I was just going to place the hops in the fermenter with no bag or marbles. Can you do this?

Yes. I do it all the time.

Yes you can do it! Last summer I pulled some Cascades straight off the vine and threw them into secondary, it was a blonde ale. No infection issues and it tasted fantastic. If you keg, I find it is easiest to bag up dry-hops and throw them in the keg.

Fresh hops will float which may not give them as much contact time with the wort, which is why people use marbles to weight them down so they sink. Just dip the marbles and bag (if you use them) with start-san.

But if you prefer, you can just go straight in with the hops. If the beer is fermented, the alcohol level combined with the preservative nature of the hops should prevent any contamination.

Where are you getting fresh hops this time of year?

badhabit said:

Where are you getting fresh hops this time of year?

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Freshhops.com, don't know if they are fresh. But they are whole.

They are not fresh. Using whole hops and fresh is a totaly different world.
For either there is enough alcohol at the time that you add them, and the hops themselves fight the bacteria, that you don't have to worry when dry hopping.
I always secondary on a dry hop and I always go two weeks with a dry hop. There is very different opinion about how and how long to dry hop. It is up to you, read other posts, there are a bunch. The thing that you don't want to do is to put them in when you are having ACTIVE fermentation. You will loose much of the aromatic quality that you are attempting to get by dry hopping.
Many times, especially with whole flower you get some CO2 production when you first put them in. Make sure that you have a little, doesn't need to be a lot, but more than just the neck of a carboy, head room for the CO2 to escape without pushing the hops up into the air lock. You can also accomplish the same thing by adding the hops to the secondary first and then puting the wort on top of them.
I also weight my hops down in a bag with polished rocks. You can use marbles or SS Ball Bearings. There is lots of opinion about using a bag for hops as well but again you can check that out on lots of posts here. You need to sanitize the bag and marbles if you use them. I tye dental floss to the top of the bag and enough to hang around the outside of the neck of the carboy. I can then hold the bag with hops up out of the way when I rack and then after cut the floss on the bag and dump the hops into the carboy to wash them out easier, taking the bag out full of whole hops and marbles is pretty much impossible.
Good luck

Thats what I was thinking. It has to be alot easier to remove the hops out of a bag than in the bag.