Squeezing Nectar from HopBag Post Boil...

[coldrice]

Interesting that I have never read anywhere whether or not it is dumb/smart to squeeze the juice out of the hopbags after the wort is chilled. The weave is so tight that a good deal of wort is caught in there. I always sanitize my hands as well as I can and squeeze out the goods. This being said, I have never experienced any discernible (at least to me) negatives. Have I just been lucky thus far, or am I just stating the obvious to get encouragement from others to continue down the path that I have been taking?

 

[Baldy_Beer_Brewery]

IMHO, there is nothing wrong with sqeezing your hopbag. But what I've found works fine for me is just tossing the hops straight into the boil. I whirlpool before I rack to my fermenter and this leaves most of the hop debris behind. What does make it into the fermenter doesn't hurt and it settles out anyway.

 

[Bert1097]

I squeeze as well. I sanitize a large strainer which straddles my brew pot. I then take the bags out of the wort, sit them in the strainer, take a sanitized spoon to keep the bag in place then start spinning the top of the bag until it get really tight. This get nearly all of the wort/ hop goodness out of the bag. I haven't had a problem thus far and can't really think of a negative. The wort is still pretty darn hot during this period so I would think that infection is a low risk.

 

[azscoob]

I squeeze the wort from my hopcatcher when I brew, it's perfectly normal for a brewer to want to squeeze his bag. I am sure many on here are non-squeezers, and there are plenty who do squeeze, but I cant see any issues with doing it.

 

[coldrice]

I've had very little luck with whirlpooling for some reason. Every time i try it i still get all the break material into the fermenter. It seems like I can't get a good whirlpool going because of how far the probe from the thermometer and the inner workings of the ball valve stick into my MegaPot... or am I just an idiot? (possible) I've always felt that a brewer is likely to get a better extraction from the hops by directly pitching them to the boiling wort, but in the case of my upcoming IIPA, I am using 7 oz. of pellet hops which will result in a $%&*ton of sludge in the bottom of the kettle... the concern: how much wort is caught up in that sludge?

 

[beerthirty]

I use 2 hop bags, early additions and late additions. I squeeze the early bag to get the wort. After a 60 min boil you have everything out of it. Late bag is squeezed for extra aroma and flavor. Two bags also give more room for the wort to flow through the bags.