HopBlooded
Well-Known Member
I've been looking everywhere for tips on dry hopping with leaf hops in conicals and haven't yet found an answer that really answers my question.
In the manual it says "Do not use loose whole leaf hops for dry-hopping!" and recommends using pellets or a hop bag. Obviously the easy answer is to use pellets, but I prefer to use leaf hops when possible. The problem is that stuffing 4 oz of leaf hops in a hop bag results in the bag just kinda floating there. I've used sanitized marbles successfully with 2 oz of hops, but any more than that and the marbles aren't heavy enough to pull all the hops down into the beer (or you need to use a ridiculous number of marbles)
So I've got a black IPA with 4.25 oz of Citra in my 14 gal Fermenator right now. Yesterday I boiled the bag and marbles, stuffed the hops in the bag, tied it off with fishing line and crammed the whole thing down the hatch. I theorized that once the hops began absorbing some of the beer that they would begin to sink. I sanitized a stainless spoon and tried to push the bag under to get it wet (gently so as to keep from aerating the beer). I checked on it again just now and the bag's just floating on top of the beer still.
Not sure what to do at this point. Like I said, I'd prefer to use leaf hops if I could, but if pellets really are the best thing to do, I'm happy to switch. Does anyone have any good ideas about this?
Thanks in advance!
In the manual it says "Do not use loose whole leaf hops for dry-hopping!" and recommends using pellets or a hop bag. Obviously the easy answer is to use pellets, but I prefer to use leaf hops when possible. The problem is that stuffing 4 oz of leaf hops in a hop bag results in the bag just kinda floating there. I've used sanitized marbles successfully with 2 oz of hops, but any more than that and the marbles aren't heavy enough to pull all the hops down into the beer (or you need to use a ridiculous number of marbles)
So I've got a black IPA with 4.25 oz of Citra in my 14 gal Fermenator right now. Yesterday I boiled the bag and marbles, stuffed the hops in the bag, tied it off with fishing line and crammed the whole thing down the hatch. I theorized that once the hops began absorbing some of the beer that they would begin to sink. I sanitized a stainless spoon and tried to push the bag under to get it wet (gently so as to keep from aerating the beer). I checked on it again just now and the bag's just floating on top of the beer still.
Not sure what to do at this point. Like I said, I'd prefer to use leaf hops if I could, but if pellets really are the best thing to do, I'm happy to switch. Does anyone have any good ideas about this?
Thanks in advance!