I've got a stainless steel mesh "tea ball" that opens up into two halves. Try Asian grocery stores, mine was made in Vietnam.
You can get small single - cup size but the one you'd need is the about the size of a golf ball, as long as it fits through the opening of a cornie it's good.
The advantage of a tea ball is that it sinks down to the bottom of the keg and rests next to the pickup tube, so you are drawing off hoppiness with every glass.
Looking for any input on adding hops to the keg after chilling. What does everybody think?
Thanks
i use these too, but the ones i use are about the size of a tennis ball...and i only fill each one halfway (about .5 oz) because the pellets will expand. i have used the smaller golf ball size for things like spices.
I use these too- but only for whole (leaf) hops. The pellets disintegrate and come right through.
For pellet hops, I use a very fine mesh bag (like from @Wilserbrewer ) because I swear that they will clog the diptube if even a little come through.
The tea ball only holds about 1/2 ounce or so of whole hops. One time I packed more in, and when the keg was gone and I removed the ball, the hops inside were totally dry! So I will use two balls with less hops in them, and that works great. I never tie the balls or the bag to the keg- they go right in the bottom.
It takes longer to extract the hops flavor and aroma in cold beer, so this is a great way for the beer to remain hoppier, longer. But it doesn't really work as well for super young IPAs, since it takes a while for the flavor extraction.
Sometimes I will keep the keg warm for the first 3 days, and then place it in the kegerator, so then I will have the best of both worlds.
.........As for serving through a cold keg with dry hops, I like the stainless mesh tubes that can easily be dropped into corny kegs.
Like these?
Link to hop screen on AiH
Link to Hop Screen on Stainless Brewing
I'm thinking about one of these instead of buying more of the tea balls.
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