Dry Hopping Question

[dan_rouse]

I'm doing my first batch where I will dry hop tomorrow. I am pretty meticulous about sanitation throughout the whole brewing process. Question is; has anyone ever had an infection that they can most likely contribute to the actual hops during dry hopping?

 

[tuskenraider]

Nope, and from what I've read, I understand hops are fairly resistant to infection.

 

[Jaysus]

That plus, you know, there's alcohol in the beer now... alcohol is pretty good at killing off the nasties

 

[Xpertskir]

Dont over think it, just drop them in.

 

[Beer-lord]

If I use a hop sack, I'll spray it with Starsans before I dumb it in and I know some people boil the hop sack but that may be going overboard. I've never had a problem.

 

[fortyseven]

Hops are a preservative. Makes no sense that it'll infect your beer.

 

[dozer5454]

I have dry hopped many IPA's with leaf and pellets. Never had a problem. I will dip the hop sack in starsan. I also use glass rocks to weight it down and I starsan them also.

 

[johngaltsmotor]

Not to be the bearer of bad news, but.... Yes*

The * in this case is that they were home grown hops. I'm not sure if it was a wild yeast that didn't get killed off during the drying and deep freezing or what.
The FG hydrometer reading was fantastic and 7 days later it was undrinkably sour. I ended up pouring the entire batch one bottle at a time (after hoping that it would age out okay).

Aside from that one attempt to home grown dry hop though, I've never had an issue. I reserve those for additions that gets tossed into boiling wort.

 

[dan_rouse]

Thanks everyone. I'm well aware of the preservative qualities of hops, but was looking for the outlier response that JGM gave, because it seems possible for infection from dryhopping, just as we get sick, even though our bodies fight off 99% of what we are exposed to daily.

The hops i'm using come from a local grower and came as a package when I bought rhyzomes. I'm sure they're fine, but they came in big ziploc bags, rather than vac-sealed. So closer to home grown looking.