That's it. Made my decision easy today.

[619Brewer]

So I brewed two IPA's and a pale ale recently and it was time to keg my first IPA. I had racked to secondary for my dryhopping and then racked to my keg. I use pellet hops and I had just thrown them in my carboy instead of using a bag or anything.

Well, I went to try the first pint or two of the IPA and it clogged my diptube with hops!

So it made my decision to buy a hop spider and dryhop screen for my kegs that much easier.

 

[jeff62217]

That happened to me with my first brew. I dry hopped an APA with 4oz of hops and could barely squeeze it through the carboy neck. The hop sack came undone in the process, my first time racking I picked up a ton of trub/hop debris.

First pour a whole pellet got stuck in the dip tube/spring. Cleared it, tried again. Same result. Cleared, tried again. Same.

Unhooked the keg, vented and opened then racked filtering with a grain bag into bottling bucket. Got all my problem causing solid debris. Re-transferred back to the keg.

It turned out pretty good, but didn't have enough bittering to blend with the amount of dry hoppiness. A few lessons learned that time.

 

[day_trippr]

Crash-cooling before kegging would have prevented all of that. I always use pellets for dry hopping, let them swim free for 5 days or so, then crash them straight to the bottom, along with whatever trubby bits were still floating about. One day, all the hops are bottomed, then each additional day just adds to the brightness.

No issues with getting the hops in or out of the carboy with pellets, and the crashing takes all the kegging work and dispensing pain out of the equation. It really is the simplest way to dry hop pre-keg.

For post-keg dry hopping, otoh, I always use whole cones in a sanitized muslin bag. No problems getting a bag of hops in or out of a keg mouth - though I do advise adding the hops after the beer has been chilled but before it's been carbed to avoid carbonation eruptions from all those lovely nucleation sites.

When I do this I leave the hops in 'til the keg kicks. My experience has consistently shown there are no grassy notes imparted even if the keg takes a few weeks to kick, if the beer was cold from the start...

Cheers!

 

[FatDragon]

I was told just to toss the dry hops in with my first IPA. Since I don't have the capacity to cold crash, I ended up with some major issues on bottling day. Definitely wouldn't recommend it personally.

I dry hopped my 3.5 gallon IIPA last night with 4.5 oz of hops. I'm sure I'll lose some of the solids out of the loosely-tied bag, but there was only so much I could do with the smallish bag and the neck of the carboy. Definitely looking forward to getting a hop spider together for boils as well - filtering 6-7 oz of hop pellets out while transferring from the kettle to the carboy was not a fun time.

 

[zachattack]

I dry hop with loose pellets, right in the primary after fermentation is over. I just dump them in. After a day or two you can give the carboy a gentle swirl to make sure the hops are wet, then they should be close to sunk after a few more days. Then just rack carefully and you're all set. If you really want you can fit a hop back or cheesecloth over the outlet (not inlet) of the siphon while you're racking to filter anything that makes it through. But I've never had a problem.

 

[619Brewer]

Crash-cooling before kegging would have prevented all of that. I always use pellets for dry hopping, let them swim free for 5 days or so, then crash them straight to the bottom, along with whatever trubby bits were still floating about. One day, all the hops are bottomed, then each additional day just adds to the brightness.

No issues with getting the hops in or out of the carboy with pellets, and the crashing takes all the kegging work and dispensing pain out of the equation. It really is the simplest way to dry hop pre-keg.

For post-keg dry hopping, otoh, I always use whole cones in a sanitized muslin bag. No problems getting a bag of hops in or out of a keg mouth - though I do advise adding the hops after the beer has been chilled but before it's been carbed to avoid carbonation eruptions from all those lovely nucleation sites.

When I do this I leave the hops in 'til the keg kicks. My experience has consistently shown there are no grassy notes imparted even if the keg takes a few weeks to kick, if the beer was cold from the start...

Cheers!

This beer was crash cooled for 3 days prior to racking to the keg at 34 degrees. It's a moot point as I've ordered the spider and dry hopper.