Herb ball exploded in keg! How to clear pellet hops?

[snarkattack]

Got an urgent situation on my hands here... I have a corny full of a rye pale ale that was dry hopped with 1 oz of pellets in a SS herb ball. I've used this before with no trouble, but it looks like my luck's run out and the ball busted open!

It's already been carbed, cold crashed it to 38F and it settled a little bit, but still pours as a cloudy mess of hop dust. If it were just for me I'd ignore and drink it, but it's due to be served at a party in 36 hours and I know it won't go over well with some of the homebrew fans in attendance.

What can I do to clear this up? I do have an empty corny to transfer into. Austin Homebrew is my LHBS but the only thing I really see there is a plate filter kit, and excepting this one unfortunate batch I don't see myself ever wanting to filter homebrew again.

Any brilliant suggestions?

 

[Elshauno]

I would strain out what I could from the surface then pull the diptube post and tie a nylon bag to the end of it. Good luck!

 

[SweetSounds]

I would think that filtering is your only option at this point for real clear beer. The fact that you have hop dust in suspension means you either have to filter it while transferring to another keg, or put some sort of filter on teh dip tube like Elshauno said. But, if you have a filter on the dip tube, and it clogs when you're trying to serve it, you'll have a hassle on your hands at best...

 

[greenbirds]

That is a tough situation. I would also raise the diptube, tie a nylon hop sack around the end, and attempt to transfer to another keg. You'll need to make a jumper to go from out post to out post, and make sure the receiving keg is sealed when you start the transfer, or else it will foam like crazy. During the transfer, burp the receiving keg every few seconds by pulling the relief to keep beer flowing.

Hopefully the bag filter does not clog up. Might sound crazy, but if I were you I might actually invert the keg first to get the pellet material in suspension, rather than all at the bottom where it might immediately clog the bag. It may still, but perhaps you could get most of the beer transferred before the beer/sediment level drops low enough to clog.

I don't know if you could do the transfer with the bag on the receiving diptube, to "catch" the hop debris. Depends whether it gets clogged going through the diptube/poppets/posts on its way to the receiving keg.

Like sweetsounds said, I think serving through a filtered diptube might be disastrous.

 

[DustinHickey]

Ouch.....

Sorry dude. You could try the "I'm more cultured and I can't belive you other homebrewers never made an asain green tea style pale ale before" card.