Adding secondary hops / flavor additions

[skarz]

One thing I have never really seen explained in-depth is when you add hops for dry hopping or various flavor additions, are you supposed to just let them sit on top in the fermenter? Obviously swishing them around would undoubtedly lead to oxidation but how are you supposed to get the hops / flavor additions "in" the beer?

 

[micraftbeer]

I just make sure they're in contact with liquid wort/beer. If there's a thick/fluffy krausen in the way, I'll sterilize my stainless spoon with StarSan, then lightly pull the foam out of the way so my hops charge hits liquid.

 

[Rob2010SS]

Depends on what your fermenting in.

If you ferment in carboys, you can drop them in and GENTLY SWIRL the carboy back and forth to get the hops to fall in. I always had pretty good success with that. I can't stress the word gently enough though. Don't shake it back and forth to cause a lot of splashing. You just want to create a slow whirlpool almost in the carboy to get them to submerge. If you have CO2, you can also purge the headspace of the carboy before doing this to try and elminate/reduce as much O2 as possible.

If you ferment in something like a conical, you can give short bursts of CO2 through the bottom dump port to get them to mix into solution.

Even a washed and sanitized spoon was always too risky for me to risk it. I know several people do it but that was a route I never took.