Bad mistake of Dry Hopping too early

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I'm newish to this game and only just starting to try to experiment more and add ingredients to my beer on the road to hopefully do full grain beer.

I started with:
Coopers Pale Ale Kit
500gm of the beer enhancer 2
and since I really love the hops at the moment(yes I'm from New Zealand). 70gm of Cascade hops made into a tea for 15minutes then strained off, juices poured into the fermenter.
21 litres of water

Opening gravity was 1.035, so not overly high

Added to this after tasting a bottle of the Atom Blend-1 beer with camomile I thought I'd add a couple of spoonfulls of earl grey tea leaves and another 30gm of hops into a mesh bag (love the hops).

Problem was for some stupid reason. I put the mesh bag in the primary at the start of the fermentation process and not at the end.:smack:

It's only been 4 days, but I haven't seen a huge amount of bubbling through the airlock, but as I have a string poking out the side of my bucket, it's probably not the most air tight container. There is a small amount of sludge on the bottom and a ring a cm or so higher then the beer level indicating that at some stage there was krausen/fermentation on top.

Basically I'm worried that dry hopping so early may have killed the fermentation, has anyone had any experience with this?

I'll take a gravity reading tomorrow and see where it's at. I'm told that FG for this beer is about 1.010 or round abouts, so hopefully it just finished quickly

And yes I'm probably an idiot for trying something so stupid
 
The hops will not kill the yeast or stop the fermentation. The CO2 produced by the fermentation will scrub the hop aroma from the beer though. Take a SG reading, and taste, in ten days, and another a few days later for FG.
You may want to dry hop when the fermentation is complete and most of the CO2 has off gassed to retain the hop aroma in the beer.
 
Ok, just checked the gravity. It's currently at 1.015 So it must've just gone nuts fermenting on the first night. So I'll leave it for another 4 days or so. then do a few more readings.

Do you think I should now take the hops in the mesh bag out or leave them in. Does it make any difference at this stage. They've been in there 5 days now
 
I did that my first Brew day. I should have had a checklist, but I was doing every thing I researched from memory. Did okay until the end and as soon as I did it I was like OH CR$P! Anyway, it was fun to come home each day and open the fermentation chamber and get knocked back by the concentrated Galaxy hop aroma in the escaping CO2!
 
The best thing you can do at this point is to leave it alone. The more you muck around with it, the more likely something can get introduced. There really is no harm in leaving the bag in the bucket.

I personally don't use mesh bags for dry hopping, as it's just another thing to get in the way or possibly introduce something into the beer that I don't want. It's just as easy filtering out the particles when racking for bottling/moving to a keg.
 
That wouldn't kill the yeast. Your gravity is pretty low, so it wouldn't take long to ferment. Just let it ride and bottle as usual. No worries. RDWHAHB
 
Ok, just checked the gravity. It's currently at 1.015 So it must've just gone nuts fermenting on the first night. So I'll leave it for another 4 days or so. then do a few more readings.

Do you think I should now take the hops in the mesh bag out or leave them in. Does it make any difference at this stage. They've been in there 5 days now

If you can remove the hops, without difficulty, I would take them out. Let your beer go for a while. I don't dry hop until hydrometer samples show little CO2 in solution. CO2 off gassing will scrub hop aromas from the beer. Usually this means it is around day 21 that I dry hop.
 
I'd strongly advise you just leave it alone. It's fine. Opening it and messing around only gives you risk of contamination. Just let the beer be what it is and learn from it for the next beer. There will be plenty more opportunities to make beer exactly how you want it.
 
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