Tell me more about keg hopping

[bstacy1974]

Just purchased a stainless mesh hop tube from Amazon for the purpose of keg hopping.
Any advice or lessons learned you'd like to share? Is this as good as a hop back or randall?

 

[VikeMan]

Is this as good as a hop back or randall?

It's different from both. Hopbacks rely on heat to extract hop compounds very quickly. Randalls infuse very quickly (and not very effectively IMO) as cold beer is being served. Dry hopping in the keg is, well, dry hopping, where hop compounds are extracted slowly, at cold (or cold-ish) temps. Have you dry hopped before? Same thing.

When I dry hop in kegs, I do it for about 3 days at cold temps, then push the beer (closed xfer, purged keg, etc.) to another keg for serving. Longer contact time doesn't result in much more extraction of the flavors/aromas we're typically looking for. Here's a good explanation of this:
http://scottjanish.com/a-case-for-short-and-cool-dry-hopping/

 

[Keith81]

When I dry hop (which is rare) I use one of those mesh tubes hanging from the tab on the keg lid. I just leave them in there until the keg kicks, sometimes up to 2 months. I've never had any off flavors from leaving them but the most I've done is 3 oz of pellets.

 

[shoreman]

I use a shorter version with 2.5 gallon kegs and it has drastically improved my hoppy beers like NEIPAs. I don't dry hop in the primary anymore with those beers, just large whirlpool then keg hops. I keg condition too which I think helps with any O2 pickup on transfer.

You will gauge over time how much you can fit in that tube, but I can fit about 3 oz's which is plenty for a 2.5gal beer.

I leave the tube in until I kick the keg and haven't had any issues especially with new wave hops in NEIPAS. My West Coast IPA had a bit of grassiness from the Cascade hops, so I will shy away from that hop in the future for a keg hop.