Do most of you use pellet hops for dry-hopping or whole hops?
Personally, I prefer whole hops for dry-hopping, but it can sometimes be a pain to get whole hops into a carboy fermenger via the small neck. I usually get around this by breaking up the whole hops and forcing them into the carboy through a funnell (pushing them through w/ a sanitized stick or bottling cane).
Does anyone else have any better ideas/ways to dry-hop a beer when using carboys as fermenters?
if using a carboy, I don’t want the hassle, so I use pellets.
in a bucket, I’ll use what I have. no problem.
Do you have a problem filtering out the small particles from the pellets when you rack off the 2nd fermenter?
I guess I use whole hops also because they don’t break up into such small particles and can be easily removed by racking off of them.
I much prefer whole hops for dry hopping in a carboy.
What method do you use to cram them through the neck?
Handle side of big wooden brewing spoon (i.e., a stick)
This. I use a big funnel(opening is close to the size of the carboy opening) to hold the hops and push 'em in.
OK, so pretty much what I do. Thanks.
Same here, funnel and stick. A bonus is the stick smells really good afterward.
On a side note, I am pretty sure the most heavenly smell in all of brewing
is the air being expelled from the carboy when racking onto these dryhops.
Wish I could bottle that!
Why hasn’t anyone come up with ‘Hop Cologne’? ;) I’d wear it!
Perhaps I just need to rub a few hops on my neck before going out for the evening… lol
This may be the next best thing…
I dry hop exclusively with pellets in the carboy. Too much of a pain for me to cram them in, or more importantly, get them out again. But that’s me. 
Yep, I’m a pellets only kind of guy too
yeah just pellets…easy
Racking & dry hopping complete.
Video HERE for anyone interested. 
I have a small vial of Hop Shave that came from Hop Union a few years ago. It may have been a give away at the NHC in Florida. It is real and it smells great to me although I am not sure how attractive it makes me to my lovely wife. Here’s what they say about it on the Hop Union site: “To sum up current uses we even make a hop shave that is quite nice. I like to think of it as an aphrodisiac.”
Whats the best method if your using pellets? Throw it in a muslin bag and then drop it in the 2nd fermenter just before you transfer your beer to the 2nd fermenter.
I don’t even bother transferring to a 2nd fermenter. Just, after the main fermentation and the krausen has dropped, dump the dry hop pellets loose into the fermenter.