Never again dry-hopping without hop sock!

[rhys333]

I think this is the third time I've dry-hopped by throwing hops in loose. I am NEVER doing this again! I wrapped a muslin bag around the racking cane to minimize hop particle transer over to the bottling bucket, but what a disaster! It was marginally succesful at doing this but great at aerating the beer and probably oxidizing it in the process. Ugh! It somehow draws air down and eventually through the cane, producing thousands of tiny bubbles as it transfers the beer. After stopping and restarting 3 times, I finally tossed the muslin bag and let the hop particles go through. Very frustrating bottling day unfortunately.

From now on I'm dry-hopping inside a weighted-down hop sock. No more hop gunk and no risk of oxidizing the beer.

 

[Agate]

Tie the bag on the outlet of your racking hose in the bottling bucket. Lots of surface area for filtering out the gunk, and no aeration. Works great!

 

[rhys333]

Tie the bag on the outlet of your racking hose in the bottling bucket. Lots of surface area for filtering out the gunk, and no aeration. Works great!

Sounds like a good idea, but does the cane or hose ever plug up? Cleaning ever an issue too?

Thanks.

 

[govner1]

I think this is the third time I've dry-hopped by throwing hops in loose. I am NEVER doing this again! I wrapped a muslin bag around the racking cane to minimize hop particle transer over to the bottling bucket, but what a disaster! It was marginally succesful at doing this but great at aerating the beer and probably oxidizing it in the process. Ugh! It somehow draws air down and eventually through the cane, producing thousands of tiny bubbles as it transfers the beer. After stopping and restarting 3 times, I finally tossed the muslin bag and let the hop particles go through. Very frustrating bottling day unfortunately.

From now on I'm dry-hopping inside a weighted-down hop sock. No more hop gunk and no risk of oxidizing the beer.

You might give one of the SS mesh tubes from Arbor Fabricating. I use them in my BB's in secondary. They work very well, no hop pellet gunk, and easy to clean. You can also use w/ whole leaf hops.
I also use a larger SS mesh basket for hopping during my boil. Again, no hop gunk and easy clean up.


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[d3track]

Do you cold crash? That gives me the best results when dry hopping.

 

[Agate]

Sounds like a good idea, but does the cane or hose ever plug up? Cleaning ever an issue too?

Thanks.

Hasn't been. I use hop pellets and they go through the auto siphon without issue. I leave the mesh bag really loose so the beer can flow slowly through it and leave the hop debris behind, and it rinses out easily.

 

[bobeer]

Do you cold crash? That gives me the best results when dry hopping.

This. Cold crash and just rack the beer off the sediment. Works every time!

Even before I was able to cold crash I would mainly use hop pellets to dry hop. If you're good enough with the racking cane you can rack from underneath the hops if they have sunk or rack from the top down if they have. If you're bottling most of the hop gunk should sink to the bottom of the bottle along with the other sediment. From my experience I've never gotten any grassy off flavors from letting it chill in the bottom of the bottle.

 

[RmikeVT]

I generally just toss my hop pellets into the fermentor. I use better bottles so they are transparent. Generally, after a week or so the hop particles have either settled to the bottom or floating around on the top, I typically just set my auto siphon on the hump on the bottom of the BB and siphon and typically don't get many hop particles. I don't like the idea of using a Muslin bag as a 'hop sock' because I feel it limits the exposure of the hops to the wort and is an added hassle and risk of infection.

 

[KeninMN]

Soak the hop sock in sanitizer. Use unflavored dental floss and weigh the hop sock down with lead-free glass marbles (from Marble King, New York, New York.) Diffusion will see to it that your beer gets plenty of exposure to the hops...

 

[BlackGoat]

another vote for cold crashing, this issue goes away. You can cold crash using ice (frozen water bottles) and a swamp cooler overnight.

 

[rhys333]

another vote for cold crashing, this issue goes away. You can cold crash using ice (frozen water bottles) and a swamp cooler overnight.

Thanks for the responses everyone. BlackGoat, I don't have a dedicated fridge for cold crashing, but your ice and swamp cooler idea sounds like something I could try. I've done this during summer to keep fermentation temp down, but is it effective enough to cold crash hop gunk?

 

[Agate]

I'm in the same boat as you with not having fridge space. It should work fine, though. The reason the hop gunk floats is that the hop particles provide nucleation sites for CO2, and if you increase the capacity for your beer to hold onto the CO2 just a little by chilling it, the CO2 should stop coming out of solution and the gunk should sink to the bottom.

 

[standpoint]

Why not just throw the hops in a muslin bag, tie fishing line around the top, and weigh it down a bit? No gunk in your beer to have to worry about.

 

[BlackGoat]

yes, I've cold crashed prior to getting a ferm fridge. Basically I just froze about 10 water bottles and made giant ice cubes using big plastic cups then put them into the swamp cooler. Its a little bit of a hassle (especially when compared to using a fridge) but I was able to get the temps steadily down into the upper 30s for a couple days and produced beautifully clear beer. Not ideal, but it works.