Dry hopping in the keg

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modenacart

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I plan on dry hopping a california common and was thinking of doing it in the keg insead of the fermenter. Is this going to be a problem? Also, I plan on using an oz of leaf. Is leaf better than pellets?

Thanks
 
Dry hopping in the keg works just fine. In general, leaf hops work better as you don't have to worry about sucking up the hop pellet particles through your dip tube.
 
That's fine- I use either a sanitized fine mesh bag, or a stainless "tea ball" in the keg. They worked great. I used leaf hops, but the next time I'll use whatever I have (some hops are very hard to find right now!). I would think that the pellets would kind of disintegrate and be messier, but I haven't done that yet.
 
I dry hopped pellet hops in my carboy and was very careful when siphoning into the keg but I still got enough hop mush to plug the poppet. I had to vent the keg and dis-assemble the keg dip tube clean it sanitize it and re-assemble.

Never again. All dry hopping should be contained in some way!!!!
 
Exactly- a little leaf from the hops could either plug up your dip tube which would be a big pain. You'd have beer in there, but you couldn't get it out without oxidizing it. Or, you could have a problem like missing link, and have it plug up your poppit and make a real pain.

So, you can use a sanitized hops bag, or anything else that can keep them together.
 
Here ya go:

Some marbles, a paint strainer bag from Lowe's and a small zip tie.

DryHop1.JPG

DryHop2.jpg

You obviously can't do this first. THis is just for illustrative purposes.

DryHop3.jpg

Dryhop5.jpg

Dryhop6.jpg
 
Ok, I'm convinced. I'm going to have to try this sometime. I've only ever dry hopped in secondary.
 
I have done both leaf and pellet hops in a hop bag in the keg, just zip tied low enough so it would be near the bottom, but not so low the bag could clog the dip tube, has worked very well several times. I have found that leaf hops give a great aroma and the beer clears nicely, with pellets, the beer was always cloudy and picked up more hop flavor than aroma (I also had some oak in the bag...)
 
I have an IPA dry hopping in a keg right now with Summitt hops. It was kind of harsh at first, but after a little while it's excellent.
 
One advantage of dry hopping in the keg, you can add more later. I've found that using small quantities of several hops works better than massive quantities of one type. My 3CPA is dry hopped with 1/2 ounce each of Cascade, Perl and Amarillo.
 
If you have a pressure release nub on the lid of the keg, attach your bag there and then if you want to remove it without reaching into the keg, you can. I use a hose clamp to secure the string, and use the proper length of dacron line to tie the bag with. I use paint strainer bags.

hop_bag.jpg
 
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