dry hop w/pellets in keg, no sack. crazy?

[bobjohnson]

I have begun fermenting in a 10 gal corny and now have a pale ale that I need to dry hop with 1/2 oz of simcoe (pellets). So, my options are to dry hop in the 10 gal fermenter or the 5 gal serving keg. I am leaning towards doing it in the serving keg. I really don't want to use a hop bag or such. Not sure why, just kind of don't. Another item to worry about and prefer the hops to run free.

So, seems all my reading says not to just toss in the pellets by themselves. But, tell me if this is way off base... in the serving keg, which once it is in my kegerator, will not move an inch until empty, won't the pellet debry settle to the bottom with the other normal trub in a keg? Sure, I'll get some particals in the first couple pints, but won't the beer run clear after that (again, as long as that keg doesn't move at all)?

what do you think?

 

[John_FL]

You can end up clogging the keg if hop particles fill the poppets. Also you can dry hop for too long.

 

[ChickenArise]

I just recently had a clogged poppet. It was pretty damn annoying, so I'd recommend against it.

I ended up switching out the poppet for a clean one, which got clogged in turn. 3-4 de-clogs later and a number of intervening 'learning experiences' I was at least able to get beer from the keg into glasses. It was still flowing at a rate that would normally be about 10psi even though I had it set to 15psi.

As the keg got to the bottom, all that would pour was foam, so there ended up being about another 2-3 pints at the end that were undrinkable.

Plus side - when the beer was pouring, the slight clog acted as a filter which 'cleared' my beer up even faster than it normally would have.

 

[John_FL]

That being said you could dry hop in the keg and rack from the keg with a siphon if you simply need a vessel to dry hop in. But I wouldn't try and dry hop in the keg and serve from it normally. It will clog. The bottom of the keg is rounded don't forget. So the slop will just keep sliding down around the pickup. You alternatively could shorten the dip tube if you plan on doing this a lot. But then you have a dedicated forever changed keg and dip tubes aren't cheap.

 

[nebben]

I would recommend against this. Poppets clog easily with hops debris. To unclog them, you must shut off the gas to your keg, relieve the pressure to the keg, remove the post and poppet, clean it up, then reassemble it.

Even then, that just unclogs it that one time. If you dry hopped and there are another 1.9 ounces (dry ounces) of hops down there, you will clog up again.

You can remove the poppet entirely and reconfigure your beer-out quick connect so that it doesn't need a poppet to open the valve, and then possibly get by just pushing the hops out with every pint. The drawback to this approach is that you must leave the beer-out line connected any time there is pressure in the keg, since removing the beer-out quick connect would allow beer to escape since no poppet is present. Doable for sure if you are willing to disassemble and reassemble your keg/hoses on the fly with carbonated beer in the keg. I have done this once when I had whole-hop debris that made it into a serving keg. Hops in serving kegs don't work very well unless they are bagged or filtered.