Marbles for dry hopping

When dry hopping I have always in the past used a SS spoon that I keep around just to weigh the hop bags down. Well, I have a couple of IPAs that I need to dru hop now so I'm planning on using marbles. So how many do you use to weigh down an ounce in a bag? If you use larger marbles how big and how many?

It is completely unnecessary to weight a hop bag when dry hopping.

Do you just throw it in on top? Won't the hops on top be dry?

Spring_Chicken said:

Do you just throw it in on top? Won't the hops on top be dry?

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Nope. Just give the fermenter a shake every once in a while.

You're assuming that I can. Sadly my Dr has said that I need to limit lifting until my neck is back up to par. I lifted something at home and hurt myself. It couldn't be homebrew. 0

I use marbles for weighting grape skins and dry hopping. THe amount depends on how many hops. With pliney the elder I use about 2 lbs of glass marbles and use some non-flavoured dental floss and a stainless pipe clamp to suspend the hop bag about halfway up my keg.

Maybe no need to weigh down hops if you arent using a bag. If you are, whole leaf hops definitely need to be weighed down. Otherwise 1/3 or more of the hops will never get wet. I always use a bag- whole or pellet- and i always weight them down. I use the SS coupling from my MLT as the weight. If i have more than one thing going at a time i use my SS hose barbs.

Spring_Chicken said:

You're assuming that I can. Sadly my Dr has said that I need to limit lifting until my neck is back up to par. I lifted something at home and hurt myself. It couldn't be homebrew. 0

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You don't need to "lift" the fermentor to give it a shake. Just tip it up on its side without lifting it and rock it a little.

Spring_Chicken said:

You're assuming that I can. Sadly my Dr has said that I need to limit lifting until my neck is back up to par. I lifted something at home and hurt myself. It couldn't be homebrew. 0

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You don't need to lift a thing. Just tilt the fermenter a little bit and gently swirl. Even if you can't do that, 99% of the time the hops will sink on their own after a few days.

Kahler said:

Maybe no need to weigh down hops if you arent using a bag. If you are, whole leaf hops definitely need to be weighed down. Otherwise 1/3 or more of the hops will never get wet. I always use a bag- whole or pellet- and i always weight them down. I use the SS coupling from my MLT as the weight. If i have more than one thing going at a time i use my SS hose barbs.

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I use a bag. I don't weight it. I've tried weighting and comparing the results to unweighted bags there is no difference.

I have used marbles a few times. I think they are from the $.99 store or similar. They are just regular sized glass marbles. I take a handful and toss them in the mesh bag, stick the whole thing in a pot with some water (not with any hops/spices--just the bag and marbles) in it and bring it to a boil to sanitize. After it has boiled 10-15 minutes, I open up the bag, dump in the stuff, tie it up and drop it in the fermenter.

I recently dry hopped a beer in the keg (using hop pellets) by throwing the hop bag in without weighting it down. I'm drinking it now.

The result? Hop flavor and aroma up the wazoo!

I'll be dry hopping my first beer in a couple of weeks, is it nuts to just toss in the pellets without a bag? Can't I cold crash it around 35F for a day or two to drop that all out of suspension?

No, it's fine. However you want to do it should work ok.

I like to use bags because I find it easier to clean up after myself that way, but your setup is probably different from mine.

I looked for bags, but didn't find anything that I liked for under $4 a bag and decided to skip it. What bags do you all use?

If you are using whole cone hops, then you need to weight it to make use of all of the hops. I use the small cloth-type muslin bags that I have saved from beer kits. If you don't have one of these, you can use a 1 gal. paint strainer bag.

I also use 1" marbles and it takes more than you would think. You need to play with the amount to get it suspended.
I tie up the bag with monofilament line and cut it long enough to run up through the grommet hole and tie it to the bucket handle. This allows me to periodically remove the airlock and lift the bag up and down with the string.

People might be getting good results from dry hopping whole hops without weighting the bag down. However, they're getting a lower yield from the hops because some of them never come in contact with the beer. By weighting them down, they might get the same results with fewer hops.

Hoosier-Brewer said:

I looked for bags, but didn't find anything that I liked for under $4 a bag and decided to skip it. What bags do you all use?

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I get muslin hop bags at my LHBS for about 50 cents each.

When I dry hop in a carboy, I use pellets, let them swim free for a week, then cold crash the hop mush to the bottom and keg using an autosiphon with a piece of nylon mesh rubber-banded around the business end. No hop bags, no weights. Works great.

When I follow that up with dry hopping in the keg, I use whole hops in a nylon hop bag with a stainless steel ladle or big spoon as weight. Sinks it right to the bottom, keeps the dip tube from clogging, adds even more up-front kick to the hops. Wife even bought into it as she loves hop-forward brews...

Cheers!

I learned a valuable lesson when I did my first dry hop for a Black IPA earlier this month. I used hop pellets, dumped them into the carboy and racked on top of them. Within the hour, I had an overflowing airlock!! Apparently, the headspace I typically leave in the carboy was insufficient to accommodate the rehydration and expansion. Glad I had an extra airlock to sanitize and replace. I pulled the clogged one and for the next 30 mins I stood over the carboy and with a sanitized long-handled spoon digging out the ever expanding hops. There were still plenty in the bottom so it should turn out OK. Thank goodness for the carboy parka for soaking up the initial overflow.

I may utilize a bag next time

My LHBS is too far for a small purchase so I got my bags at Home Depot.
I have a couple of 5 gallon paint strainer bags for partial mashes and a few 1 gallon paint strainer bags for hops. I have weighed them down when adding hops to the boil and also dry hopping.

I use the weights for peace of mind if nothing else. With them I know all the hops have been submerged.

How many of you who use weights have tried it without them and compared the results?

I tried it the first couple times without weights, and quickly changed to weighting them down. If you do it in a carboy, you can clearly see that not all of the hops are exposed to the beer, they are exposed to the air. Hops are too expensive to waste like that.

As I referenced earlier, if you're getting satisfactory results by doing it in a bag without weighting them down, you could start weighting them down and reduce the amount of hops you put in the bag and get the same results. Probably cut hops in half for that.

If you do use marbles, make sure they're either pure stainless or lead-free, toxin-free glass. Cheap marbles arent food-grade and might have nasty stuff in them.

I found a 3 pack of "laundry" bags at Meijers for $5- the kind that have zippers and a loop on the end. 3 differnt sizes- same kind the wife uses to wash her bras, etc. they work great. Small ones for pellets, larger for whole hops. When done, just rinse and throw in washer. And, yes, i weight down w/ a ss coupling.

tinman1 said:

I found a 3 pack of "laundry" bags at Meijers for $5- the kind that have zippers and a loop on the end. 3 differnt sizes- same kind the wife uses to wash her bras, etc. they work great. Small ones for pellets, larger for whole hops. When done, just rinse and throw in washer. And, yes, i weight down w/ a ss coupling.

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I have been soaking my nylon bags in OneStep/PBW, rinsing them, letting them dry, and sanitizing prior to use. Would washing them in the washing machine open them up to further contamination or produce off flavors from residual soap in the machine?

Just curious....

I wash them w/ no soap, just hot water cycle. On wifes new washer, it convienently has a "sterilize" setting....

JonM said:

If you do use marbles, make sure they're either pure stainless or lead-free, toxin-free glass. Cheap marbles arent food-grade and might have nasty stuff in them.

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I was just going to ask this...I plan to dry hop tonight, and now that I look at the marbles I bought, they seem to be painted, and I just don't feel good about them.

I may use a large socket from the socket set. I've never looked that closely at marbles before...lol

MrEggSandwich said:

I was just going to ask this...I plan to dry hop tonight, and now that I look at the marbles I bought, they seem to be painted, and I just don't feel good about them.

I may use a large socket from the socket set. I've never looked that closely at marbles before...lol

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If they don't appear to be real glass, don't use them...