Dry Hopping, Racking, and hop material

[R2-D2]

The IPA that I brewed two weeks ago was my first attempt at dry hopping. After about 9 days in primary I popped open the lid and dumped the 3oz of hops right on top. Today was day 5 of dry hopping and time to rack to the bottling bucket.

Immediately I noticed that the primary was full of hop material. My siphon got jammed right away and needed cleaning. A bunch of hop material made it's way over during racking. However, during bottling I did notice that very little hop material came over.

In the future, should I dry hop in a resin bag? Develop some sort of filter during the racking process? Other?

 

[neko]

A couple options would be to use pellet hops. They should fall into the trub after a few days and it makes the racking easier. Also, you could wrap a sanitized mesh bag, if you steep grains you could use this, and wrap it around the racking cane. This helps keep bits out.

 

[user 22118]

I tossed my pellets right into the fermenter and then gave it a gentle rocking in order to coat the hops and make them fall out. Then when I racked 7 days later I placed a mesh bag over the output end of the racking tube as it went into my keg. There was very little that I picked up so the bag was really just an extra precaution.

Another little thing that I have done is get a piece of fairly rigid nylon tubing about 12" long that I put at the end of my racking cane. I could be wrong here, but 5/8 ID... The tube is cut flat at one end and cut at a 45* angle at the other end. This makes it so that I don't have the restricting black nubbin on the end of the racking cane and it doesn't get clogged, but I still don't pick up trub.

 

[R2-D2]

I used hop pellets to dry hop with but I must have stirred them up when I move from the closet to the table.

The sanitized mesh bag trick sounds perfect since I already own this and it sounds simple. Thanks!