Dry Hopping......how to clarify?

[FPM]

Hi all!

My pale ale is about a week away from transfering form my secondary to my keg. I took a peak today and noticed that the hops are still floating on the top. This is my first expirence with dry hopping, so when I did that I figured that the hops would get saturated with water and eventually settle to the bottom. But with only a week left, it doesn't look like thats going to happen. Do i need to do something special to filter the hop leaves? Cold condition? Or something else?

Thanks!
Frank

 

[Skins_Brew]

I read on here a while ago and someone said to give the carboy a few gentle shakes. i just dryhopped for the first time and i had the same issue. A few shakes every other day got most of the hops to the bottom. I am going to wrap cheese cloth or something around my racking cane when i transfer to bottle to get rid of the few remaining hops.

 

[Iordz]

Cold conditioning, along with some gelatin, work like a charm. You will have crystal clear beer. Also, be very gentle when syphoning.

 

[Jared311]

What kind of hops did you use (pellet, whole leaf, or plug) and did you use a muslin bag? It sounds like you may have used whole leaf or plug hops. My preferred method for dry hopping is placing pellet hops in a muslin bag and laying it on the bottom of the secondary and then rack the beer over it. This will help dissolve the pellets and spread them out as the beer flowing in creates currents. The remaining sediment of the pellet hops will form into a ball of sludge and remain inside the muslin bag. Any sediment that escapes the muslin bag should eventually sink to the bottom if you allow for around a week of dry hopping. If your hops don't eventually settle to the bottom I would just go ahead and rack the beer to your keg. My first guess is that they won't affect the flow at first because the cane will be at the bottom while they are still floating at the top. The only problem I could see happening is when the beer level reaches just above the yeast sediment at the bottom. You could potentially waste more beer to prevent that last bit hop sediment from racking over.

 

[SenorWanderer]

don't expect leaf hops to settle. some of it will, but most won't. some sort of bag over the end of the racking cane is the way to go. i wouldn't worry about getting the beer to clear after dry hopping. cold conditioning alone won't be enough, and isinglass/gelatin will likely strip away a lot of the flavor and aroma you just added.

 

[WBC]

I dry hop using pellot hops in the primary after 7-10 days and there is no need for a secondary and no floating hops. I wait another 10 days and after the 10 days are up everything is on the bottom of the carboy. I then pressure transfer right into the keg without moving the carboy so I don't disturb the sediment by using the orange carboy caps and a stainless racking cane and adding co2 pressure to the carboy (3 LB max). This is much less work than many other methods as I do not lift the carboy and move it to a higher position to enable a siphon to be used.

 

[Poobah58]

80% of the leaf hops will not sink. I transfer as WBC does but I put a Sure Screen over my racking cane to keep the gunk out of the keg...

 

[Surfman]

I rubberbanded a piece of sanitized cheese cloth to the end of the tubing attached to my racking cane(the end that goes in the keg) and it worked great. just make like a little "bag" out of the cheesecloth so there is room for the hop particles to collects.

 

[uwmgdman]

What I found works best for me is to dry hop in the primary when the krausen has fallen and most activity has subsided. An extra 7 or 14 days in the primary with the dry hops won't hurt anything. After the dry hops are in the beer for the 5-14 days (however long I want), I rack to a secondary, let it sit for another week or so and then bottle. You should have very little hop debris in your bottles.

I tried this method because I was getting a bit more hop debris in my bottles than I would have preferred and have used it since when dry hopping.

 

[FPM]

Im going to try the cold condition mixed with using a cheese cloth on my racking cane. I've heard of using the muslin bag before, but somewhere on byo.com it suggested not using a muslin bag because the hops wont be exposed to the wort on the scale of simply dumping the pellets in (which is why I tried it). Should I start cold conditioning now or wait till Im ready to siphon over to my keg?

Also, someone mentioned using gelatin. How does that work?

Thanks!
Frank

 

[zoebisch01]

Oh hey, you know...I found those Stainless Steel Scrubby pads work super great for whole hops! The racking cane tip just slips in there and viola!

like these (one on the left)

 

[TexLaw]

Oh hey, you know...I found those Stainless Steel Scrubby pads work super great for whole hops! The racking cane tip just slips in there and viola!

like these (one on the left)

I've never used one of those, but I hear they work very well. Just don't get the kind that already have the soap in them, as I've also heard they don't so well.

I know I've seen Biermuncher and others use a hop bag as a strainer on their racking canes.


TL

 

[scottfro]

are those things easy to reuse or do they get so gunked up that you toss them after every batch? seems a bit wasteful if so....

 

[puney_the_youkel]

I use: http://www.northernbrewer.com/pics/fullsize/Surescreen.jpg