Sterilizing procedures for dry hopping

[blackonblack]

My first recipe which called for a dry hop. I currently have the hop pellets in a ziplock bag (had to open the sealed bag for earlier hop additions) in the freezer. I bought a mislin bag I will sterilize and obviously I'll sanitize the glass carboy I plan to rack the beer to. How do I sterilize the hops? Or is freezing enough?

 

[The_Glue]

Hops can sort of sterilize themselves, originally they were used to help store beer longer via the hop's antibacterial capabilities

 

[blackonblack]

Ahhh. I remember reading that! Thank you

 

[opiate82]

Yeah, couple of things. As said above by The Glue, hops are generally an inhospitable host for the bad things that could end up in your beer. Second, usually by the time you are adding your dry hops your beer is fermented and the alcohol will help protect your beer from infection. (This isn't to say that a fermented beer is completely immune to infection...)

That isn't to say some good sanitation isn't in order. Sanitizing both the bag and the secondary carboy are good procedures (and any other equipment that may touch your beer), but beyond that there isn't much reason to worry. People on here claim to just throw handfuls of hops into their fermenter without ill effect.

One thing you should worry about though is oxidation. If you are racking to a secondary make sure you have as little headspace as possible and if you are set up to do so, purge it with CO2 first.

 

[beinert]

One thing you should worry about though is oxidation. If you are racking to a secondary make sure you have as little headspace as possible and if you are set up to do so, purge it with CO2 first.

++1... My beer got much better once I quit using the secondary fermenter. Oxidation was probably the reason. When dry hopping I just dump the pellets into the primary after fermentation has slowed, usually around the 1 week to 10 day mark.