Dry hopping and wastage?

[siobhan]

So, the fall basic beer I was working on is a Honey Blonde ale. I wanted only a tiny sweetness and a good grapefruit tang from Cascade hops (Centennial at 60 & 30, 1oz Cascade at 2). At 2 weeks, I tested SG & drank the sample to assess the flavor and found it nicely dry, but alarmingly tasteless. Seriously - pretty good BMC clone. So I dry-hopped an ounce of whole leaf Cascade in secondary for a week. Just tossed them in loose.

I bottled this weekend. There may have been a half gallon of beer I had to leave behind to keep from getting the hops shards in the bottles. What do people do to avoid this? I considered sanitizing a bag to put them in first, but then draining it looks like a good chance for oxidization. Am I over-thinking?

Next time, I'll just double the Cascade at 2 minutes. But I might want to dry-hop some time in future & I want to know the recommended way(s).

On the plus side, it tastes pretty good. Add age and carbonation, and I'm really going to regret having so little.........

 

[thughes]

I just brewed 5 gallons of APA: 1oz Cascade FWH, 5oz Cascade into the NC cube. This method gives a very mellow bitterness with a huge hop flavor/aroma.

 

[navynukesteve]

On my CDA I made I dry hopped in the keg. I put 2 oz of whole leaf cascade hops in a hop bag and just put it right in the keg between the uptake tube and the side and then siphoned me beer in. It turned out great

 

[unionrdr]

If you wanted flavor for the cascade,it needed more than 2 minutes in the boil. More like 10 to 15 minutes. 2 minutes is more for aroma.

 

[BeerChef17]

I use a nylon grain bag over the tip of my auto-siphon when dry hopping and transferring from secondary to bottling bucket

 

[kcpup]

I dry hop frequently. I use and extra fine nylon bag for the hops and use a large stainless steel bolt to weigh the bag down in the fermenter. I boil the bag and bolt, and when it's cooled I remove the bag from the water, place the bolt and hops inside and place in fermenter. I spray StarSan on the hop package before opening and use gloves. I only use pellet hops for dry hopping. Moving to this process has eliminated hop particles in beer for me.

Search the forums using dry hopping or dry hop as keywords and you'll find a ton of different, effective processes for dry hopping. Nose around a bit and you'll find one right for you and your brewery.