Keg hopping with floating dip tube

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DTrain24

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I have keg hopped cold a few times now in a small metal hop spider and it works okay. But i was wondering if it would be better to not use the spider, and instead dump the hops in the cold beer directly, because i also have a floating dip tube.

So would the free hop pellets sink in the cold beer, allowing the floating dip tube to take clear beer from the top?

I am assuming the hop spider doesn't allow for as good of hop utilization.

I also ferment and serve in the same keg, and the trub falls out and never gets into the flloating dip tube im hoping the hops would act the same way.

Cheers!
 
Some will say they do it with no issues. Some will say its gonna get clogged.

mine clogs.

Your mileage may vary.
 
Which floating dip tube? Cbds with the filter screen? If not that one is there a screen on it?
Without a screen it will clog.

I dry hop with free pellets and ferment and serve in the same keg as well. The only time I’ve gotten caught (not clogged tho) was when transferring to another keg for a double dry hop. To do that you really need to crash it hard to get them to settle. That or leave it in the keezer for several weeks

you will suffer some loss doing it this way but I think you will get better results without the tube
What temp are you dry hopping at? I prefer 65. I crash to 55 or so, dry hop, then let it rise to 65. It might just be temp that’s the issue here
 
I have four of the $20 floating dip tubes you can get on Amazon without a screen and I love them. https://www.amazon.com/Ball-Keg-Floating-Dip-Tube/dp/B07ZWFQXWK

I typically use a hop canister to dry hop in the keg. The one time I tried to dry hop loose, I had serious plugging issues. I just don't think anything is gained by doing it except a bit of hop utilization. I also like to use a little dental floss to suspend the hop canister in the top of the beer and you can't do that dry hopping loose.
 
I do not have a filter on the floating dip tube.
So it sounds like free pellets and cold crashing can work, I would just have wait long enough and risk a clogged post.

I have tried dry hopping mid fermentation at 70f, (pressurized fermentation in a keg). But I also was trying now cold hopping in the keg, which brulosophy had good results with. So it would be at cold fridge temp, 35-40f
 
I do not have a filter on the floating dip tube.
So it sounds like free pellets and cold crashing can work, I would just have wait long enough and risk a clogged post.

I have tried dry hopping mid fermentation at 70f, (pressurized fermentation in a keg). But I also was trying now cold hopping in the keg, which brulosophy had good results with. So it would be at cold fridge temp, 35-40f
If you are going to do free pellets, I would definitely do a good cold crash for several days before you test it.
 
I also dump pellets straight into the serving keg with my floating dip tube and have never had a clogged post. That being said I leave it for a few days to carbonate before I start drawing beer out so I guess that is able to crash the larger particles out. It does seem to take a week or so to get the smaller hop debris to drop out though so I don't escape hop burn/bite early on.
 
has anyone tried to use a cylindrical stainless steel hop filter and a floating dip tube within the same keg? wont the ball get stuck on top of the hop filter tube?
 
has anyone tried to use a cylindrical stainless steel hop filter and a floating dip tube within the same keg? wont the ball get stuck on top of the hop filter tube?


I do this all the time and it works just fine. The hop filter will sink to the bottom fairly quickly, so potentially when you get to the bottom the ball may rest on it, but I haven't noticed any issues getting all of the beer out.
 
FWIW, I recently loose dry hopped 20 oz of pellet hops in an 11 gallon batch and didn’t have any ball lock poppet clogs/gunk transfer with the previously mentioned dip tube filter after 2 days on cold crash. The beer was still cloudy due to the dry hop charge so I transferred it to serving kegs and dosed it with biofine to really clear things up. Couldn’t have been happier.
 
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@beneken The last time I combined those components, the floating dip tube's ball rested on the filter and I had to open the keg to nudge it. So... it's a valid concern.
 
FWIW, I recently loose dry hopped 20 oz of pellet hops in an 11 gallon batch and didn’t have any ball lock poppet clogs/gunk transfer with the previously mentioned dip tube filter after 2 days on cold crash. The beer was still cloudy due to the dry hop charger so I transferred it to serving kegs and dosed it with biofine to really clear things up. Couldn’t have been happier.

Did you blast CO2 through like you mentioned before? Do you think that would work without the filter if you cold crashed it?
 
Did you blast CO2 through like you mentioned before? Do you think that would work without the filter if you cold crashed it?

I did back purge it yes. I would imagine it would have been fine without the filter. The filter looked pretty clean after I pulled it out. No big clumps, more of a film that built up during the transfer. I’m using a 1/2 bbl sankey so there’s more room for the dip tube to roam around unobstructed. Things might be more cramped in a corny keg.
 
has anyone tried to use a cylindrical stainless steel hop filter and a floating dip tube within the same keg? wont the ball get stuck on top of the hop filter tube?

those cylindrical steel hop containers have holes in the top so hops get out anyway, you might as well free hop and get more utilisation with your hops free to float around (give it a swirl whenever you can) and since you have a floating dip tube at cold temps the hops will be compacted on the bottom very far away from float.

I don’t even bother with a float, I lie keg on side and dispense from the gas-in post and no hops come out after settling which doesn’t take long. It’s a 9L corny and in cold room tho. 75g of hops.
 
I have had great success with my floating dip tubes by putting hop pellets in a paint straining bag with some stainless steel nuts to make it sink and simply tying a knot in the bag. The sunken bag does not interfere with the floating dip tube at all, but my hops stay somewhat enclosed in the bag.
 
I am definitely going to try just tossing them in free and not touching it for a few days while its cold. I will report back!
 
Bobby_M sells a dip tube screen. It works like a champ! Worth it's weight in gold for dry hopping in kegs.

https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/diptubescreen.htm
Thanks for the link! I was looking for something like this since I am planning on dry-hopping in the keg by dropping hop pellets directly in there. On the site they say that you cannot do a closed no-oxygen transfer using the beer OUT post when this screen is installed. I assume that it is because if you have any loose yeast/hops transferred from the fermenter, they will end up inside the screen - kinda defeats the purpose. Can't think of any other reason for why. So, I am assuming that it won't work very well during a 2-transfer process of making NEIPA - hopping during fermentation (loose hops in the fermenter), then transferring to a keg for loose-hop dry-hopping (this is where I was hoping to use a screen similar to the one you shared), and finally transferring to a serving keg and leaving all the sludge in the dry-hop keg. Any ideas on how to make it work?
 
I am definitely going to try just tossing them in free and not touching it for a few days while its cold. I will report back!
How’d this work? I usually cold crash then just rack from the gas out with the keg on its side, but I’d like to try the floating dip tube method. My fermzilla crashes everything out and I don’t have any clogging issues, but I’ve never tried with a corny keg
 

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