Dry-hopping issue

[chiefbrewer]

Okay, so tried my first dry hopping on this batch. I thought (incorrectly it would seem) that I could just toss some hops pellets in the fermentor, and they would just sink to the bottom over time. I checked my gravity and it was close to terminal...so I tossed them in. Been five days, so I just took a sample to see if the beer was ready to bottle. The hops seems to have broken up into millions of tiny bits just floating around in the beer. I was going to bottle tomorrow...what do I do?!?!? Would cold conditioning work to make the hops bits settle? I was think about rigging up my grain bag(sanitized of course) by sticking my racking cane down into the bag and tie-rapping it so it would act as a filter when i rack to the bottling bucket...would this work? Any thoughts??

 

[Dogphish]

i know that people do recommend using a sanitized bag tied around the cane as a filter. you can boil the bag in water for 5 minutes to sanitize it.

 

[Revvy]

If you rack slow and carefully you should be able to rack under and have the hop particles float on the surface as the beer moves over. You could use something as a light filter on the bottom, but just stop when the hops hit the trub layer on the bottom.

 

[chiefbrewer]

i know that people do recommend using a sanitized bag tied around the cane as a filter. you can boil the bag in water for 5 minutes to sanitize it.

Cool...it seemed to me like it would work. Just wanted to see if anyone else had ever done it...or heard of it being done succesfully.

 

[Calder]

I use pellets, just toss them in. Typically leave them in 2 weeks. By the end of 2 weeks they are on the bottom, and I just rack as normal, no filter to mess with.

 

[chiefbrewer]

I use pellets, just toss them in. Typically leave them in 2 weeks. By the end of 2 weeks they are on the bottom, and I just rack as normal, no filter to mess with.

Is two weeks too long for a pale ale? I'm not shooting for an IPA profile. I am new to dry-hopping. So i am not sure how long it should be in. I figured 5 days was a good figure.

 

[SamuraiSquirrel]

I dry dry hopped with pellets the first time I dry hopped and bottled a week after dry hopping (This was about 2 years ago). About 90% of the hop sludge fell to the bottom and there were still some hop particles floating around. Of course this freaked me out and I assumed this was unacceptable so i vowed never to use pellets again and just dump them in.

Next couple batches I tried the bag thing, I tried the stainless scrubbie thing, I tried whole hops, i tried containing the hops in some sort of device before tossing them in...... Those were all too much work for me so I said screw it and just started throwing pellets in again.

However many hundred of gallons or homebrew later I could care less about the small amount of pellet hops getting sucked up by my racking cane on bottling day. A strange thing happens when you siphon and get everything into the bottling bucket. These once floating (2 minutes ago when they were floating around in the fermenter and just wouldn't sink) annoying hop particles sink to the bottom of your bottling bucket. The end result ........ 1 or 2 bottles at the end of you bottling process have some hop particles in them ........ To make matters even better they pretty much stay at the bottom of those 2 bottles with your yeast sediment unless you pour everything in your glass.

 

[Gldnst8warrior]

I use pellets, just toss them in. Typically leave them in 2 weeks. By the end of 2 weeks they are on the bottom, and I just rack as normal, no filter to mess with.

Same here, been working great for me.

 

[Hawgbranch]

I tried the SS tea ball and I tried the sanitized bag. Now I just throw them in the fermenter. 10 days at room temp, cold crash and keg.

 

[chiefbrewer]

Thanks for all the advice. I will just rack it into the bottling bucket and call it good. Not gonna mess with a bag/filter. Seems like enough experienced people are telling me that the hops will settle to the bottom once racked.

 

[Calder]

It's surface tension that is holding them on the top. Once disturbed, they drop