Hop sacks

[Biergarden]

I've been having issues with my loose leaf hops not completely allowing my unfermented beer to drain through the false bottom of the boil kettle. I like using whole hops because of the benefit of collecting a portion of the hot break going onto the wort chiller and fermenter. It filters out some of the mess going into the fermenter.
I have some mesh hop sacks, but I'm wondering if anyone had notice a decrease in the amount of hop utilization using them. I've used them with pellets before, with loose leaf to collect the hot break; but I'm wondering if anyone has noticed a difference.

Thanks,
A

 

[Pappers_]

I use a hop bag on most of my hoppy beers and don't notice a difference. But I've been using one for so long, I wouldn't notice the difference. What I mean is that if I've been tweaking (which is very different from twerking) a pale ale receipe, and want more bitterness, I increased the bittering addition. Both times I've used a hop bag, so the hop bag doesn't really play into the recipe tweaks, if that makes sense.

Good luck!

 

[day_trippr]

With leaf one should use muslin bags, and keep the hop volume modest so it doesn't end up in a ball.
Better to use multiple bags than to cram the cones - that for sure will wreak havoc on extraction efficiency...

Cheers!

 

[Biergarden]

I like the idea of dividing the doses between bags. You can get a lot of them for cheap, so it makes sense. I think I can leave 1-1.5 oz of loose leaf hops in the kettle to trap some of the hot break. Much more than that at it seems to slow my transfers into the fermenter. It's done my gravity, so that accounts for some of it.
Thanks for your input.