So I will dry hopping an ESB and an IPA soon (my first time doing this). I’m using pellets in a carboy. I was thinking of putting them a muslin sock and tying a couple of strings of dental floss to spend them and make it easier to get them back out. My other idea it just drop them in the primary carboy and then rack to secondary right before bottling and then remove the hops with everything else. anybody have a suggestion on which method i should use or other one i didn’t mention?
I just drop my pellets into the primary, no secondary and no bags. I leave my dry hops in for about 7 days then keg. The hops will eventually drop to the bottom. My beers come out clear and tasty.
I do the same thing. I do have a stainless screen I wrap around my racking cane to keep the hop particle transfer to a minimum. I leave the hops in for 5-7 days.
I just dump pellets into the secondary. The first time I did this the dissolved hop detritus wasn’t settling and a friend told me to give the carboy a shake once a day to get the hop debris to settle.All I do us barely tilt the secondary once a day and it helps the debris settle over a week or so. So if you are afraid of oxidation like I was there is no actual shaking involved.
After multiple methods over multiple batches I am now just dropping pellets into primary and leaving them for about a week. there’s enough other gunk in there that a few ounces of hops doesn’t make any difference, especially since they settle (just like the rest of the gunk). If you are careful when you rack to the bottling bucket/carboy you won’t get hardly any of this stuff into the final beer. I haven’t even been using a screen for my siphon, just carefully holding it in place, and I get almost no debris into my beer. They are coming out pretty clear too.
Note: I do tilt the bucket and put one side on a book, then let it settle a few hours before I bottle. This allows me to maximize beer transfer and minimize waste. I hold the racking cane in place to ensure I don’t suck up trub.
One thing I have noticed, is that most of the stuff that does not drop out of the beer will slowly stick to the side of the carboy. I just put the siphon cane in the middle and by the bottom the stuff I was worried about seems to be stuck to the sides. I have not seen any hops flakes in the 30 beers I have drank so far.
I took Tasty McDole and Jamil’s lead by dry hopping (pellets) near the end of fermentation, no bags/sacks. Tasty uses a conical however, so he is able to dump his trub from primary; Jamil, I believe, dry hops in secondary. I’ve been dry hopping in primary, although I think I would dry hop in secondary if I was reusing the yeast from primary.