I’ve never had to dry hop, so I wanted to know the best way to do it or for how long. I’ve heard of people putting the hops directly into the secondary and also keeping them in a mesh bag in the secondary. Anything you can offer would be great.
You can do it many ways. Putting the hops in a bag eases the ability to remove them for sure. You can add some glass or stainless steel marbles in to weigh the bag down… or not. Either way I don’t think makes a difference.
I like to keep my dry hops in for around 7-10 days but I also like to stagger dry hop additions, so I’ll add, for example, 1oz on Monday, then another 1oz on Thursday. Take them out 7-10 days later respectively. Does it make a difference? Honestly, maybe.
Keep it simple and add them to secondary in a mesh bag. If you keg, you could just dry hop in the keg.
by the way, brewing and skiing are my two loves 
I recommend using a cheese cloth grain bag. I dry hopped a pilsner last fall using the “just throw the pellets in” method and every beer out of the keg has little pieces of hop floating in it. It’s kind of annoying.
You will want to weight the bag down with a stainless steel washer or something keep the hops from just floating on the surface too.
The grain bags are cheap and readily available at your LHBS.
Paul
I use a muslin bag for dry hops. IMO, there’s no need at all to add weights.
+1
I also use a muslin bag for whole or pellet and just drop them in and go. They will start sinking to the bottom within a couple of days.
I dry hop loose. When I rack to the bottling bucket, I first line it with one of those nylon paint strainer bags. Rack as normal and, when done, very gently remove the bag from the bucket. Catches most all the hop bits that way.
If I used a bag of some type, could I just dunk it in a Star San solution and sanitize it that way? Would that let too much Star San soak in?
that’s what I do.
Thank you very much! I don’t dry hop often but my experiences in the keg have been misleading. Now I will do so with more confidence.
That would be fine. I put mine in a bowl of water in the microwave for 2-3 minutes.