Sanitize muslin hop bag?

[electricd7]

Hey all-

I am getting ready to dry hop for the first time ever and plan on using a muslin hop bag, stainless steel washer, and pelletized hops directly into the primary. I did some searching and found that most of you don't recommend sanitizing the hops, but what about the muslin bag? Obviously I will sanitize the washer, but just not sure if I should soak the bag in sanitizer as well? Its new, but you never know, so just wondering. Thanks!

ED7

 

[jessup]

throw those bad boys in and have faith. it will be okay! maybe use more dry hops to assure you get good preservative effect and extra good taste!

 

[narl79]

I've never used a bag but the people I know that do sanitize the bag. Ive never heard of sanitizing hops before??

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Home Brew mobile app

 

[tooldudetool]

I always sanitize my hop bag by either boiling it or soaking it in star san. I just toss the dry hop pellets in the fermenter, wait a week, cold crash for several days, then use a sanitized fine mesh nylon hop bag on the end of my racking cane when I transfer to keg, works like a charm!

 

[adamdillabo]

I had problems with the mesh over my intake on my auto siphon. So I put it on the out put end and it worked well. Just soaked the stockings in star San.

 

[Topher79]

I had my only infected batch (my 4th beer brewed) come from an unsanatized muslin bag. After looking at my brewing notes, I determined the bag came in contact with the grain powder when crushing grains at the LHBS and I didn't give it a second thought. Little did I realize a lot of nasties live on the grain....all the bottles were gushers and the beer tasted infected; since then (30+ batches) I've just given my muslin bags that are used for dry hopping a good saturation with StarSan from a spray bottle and have been good to go with no issues since.

IMO...you can take a chance and not saturate it, or take 30 seconds and 5¢ worth of StarSan and give the it a good soaking. It's better than dumping your time, effort and $$$ on a possible infected beer.

Also, you can just dump the hop pellets directly from the sealed bag into your fermentation vessel, tie a piece of sanitized muslin bag over the end of your racking cane, and use that as a filter to keep the pellets out when transferring to bottles/keg. If the flow starts slowing, just give the racking cane a shake....it's worked for me several times.

 

[masskrug]

I soak my bag in Starsan, fill it with hops and drop. I don't use marbles, rocks, weights, etc. The bag will drop when it get soaked.