Hops in my secondary.

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lowend

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So, I have a batch of beer in my secondary fermenter and I added extra hops to it during the transfer. It suddenly hit me that I have no idea how I'm supposed to go about getting the hops out of the carboy when I transfer the beer out of it (It's my first time dry-hopping). I have a week or two before I'll be bottling, so I'm not too worried about it, but I am wondering how it's going to be done. Also, how do you take a hydrometer test from a carboy if you don't have a thief?
:confused:
 
If you uses whole hops, chances are they will float or sink and you just rack carefully to avoid them. If you used pellets, they should all disssolve and fall to the bottom, I usuall go and give the fermenter a gentle swirl a couple of times to help the process. If the hops don't want to fall out of suspension, crash cool it for a couple of days and then rack.

Eastside
 
You can siphon some beer into a graduated cylinder, or maybe a long beer glass if you have one? I use a wine thief and it makes things real easy:)

As for your hops im not to sure. But i would suggest using cheesecloth or a hop bag so you can easily remove them next time you do it.

:mug:

-Nick
 
Good to know.

Another carboy question; what's a good way to clean it? This is my first time using one, and it was clean when I bought it. I just rinsed it out and sanitized it before using it. I've heard that you're not supposed to clean a glass carboy with soap, so how are you supposed to clean it then?
 
they make a brush for carboys, and yeah, you can use soap, oxiclean clear is pretty widely excepted. I mix a little oxiclean with a little bleach, fill with water, soak. If I need to I break out the brush. The only bad spot is where the krausen meet the beer. That spot is nasty.

About the gravity sample, use a turkey baster, works great from the secondary, but much harder from the primary (if it is a 6.5 gallon) unless you have one with a long body.
 
Just made this mistake myself.

See Dry Hopped in the Genereal section for details of my disaster.

I tired the Filter on the racking cane. doesn't work and only adds to the airation of the beer with massive bubbles forming and then clogging as the debris gets into the flow.

Note, I've always been carefull to avoid the yeast and other fall out in the carboy. Yet with pelets the particulate is so small the filter can't get it without clogging within a galon or so.

I will try to use a drip coffee filter and crash cool and transfer from Keg to container to suck up all the debris. the filtered beer then will go back into the keg and I'll vent out the O2 for CO2.. I just hope all the racking doesn't over airate my beer and ruin it.

Best of luck with yours... Try the crash cooling before you try to rack it. Something I didn't do the first time. Hopefully you will have better results than I did.
 
I just bottled my IPA on friday and I dry hopped 2 oz of leaf hops and I put them in a muslin bag. I had a hell of a time getting them in the carboy and I had to cut the bag and rinse it out like 7 times till I got all the hops out.

Thats why I posted this thread to make clean up easier.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f37/stainless-steel-brew-infuser-102664/

Its a brew infuser. No easy way around it. I think next time I will use pellets in the muslin bag.:rockin:
 
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