Dry Hopping

[patriots4ever]

I'm sure this has been brought up in other threads somewhere, but here goes;

The last few beers I have brewed have been dry hopped. They have come out awesome, but I know there has to be a better way. I rack the beer from the primary into the secondary on a bed of hops (hop amount is obviously dependent on the particular beer I'm brewing) but I just have a couple of questions:

1. Is there a way to keep the hops particles out of my finished product?

2. Would you recommend perhaps using a steeping bag to be dropped into the (ever so narrow hole) of my better bottle?

3. How do I retrieve the bag?

4. Is there a way to maybe filter the hops through the auto siphon is the steeping bag option isn't available?

I'm just looking for some ideas. The reason I bring this up is I bottled a Golden ale the other night and it's looking like I got a lot of hops residue in the finished product. I have dry hopped with whole leaf hops for other batches and have not had this problem, but sometimes whole leaf hops aren't available for particular brews I'm doing.

I appreciate any and all feedback. Thanks for reading

 

[Sarrsipius]

use a muslin (steeping) bag. Works great. just jam it through the neck. when you clean out the fermenter you will have to wrestle a bit with the bag to get it out. When I used carboys, during cleaning,\ I used to get a bit of the bag out through the neck then slice it open with a razor blade. Then you can work the hops out without any trouble.

 

[patriots4ever]

Thank you. I will give this a shot for my next batch.

 

[WilliamWS]

If you cool your beer before you rack just about all of the particles will drop to the bottom. With careful racking you'll be good.

I've used a bag before but, honestly, if you're using pellets as I usually do it doesn't keep all of the really fine stuff in. So it still benefits from crash cooling before racking and you still have to be equally as careful when racking. The bag does help a bit if you don't have the ability to drop the temperature, though.

My results with crashing for a day then racking have been every bit as good (better if you're not crashing with the bag) and easier (one less thing to fish out of my fermentor).

 

[RoadKing]

I use 1 gallon paint strainers right in primary bucket.