I’m about to do my first dry hop. My primary fermentation has completed. Can I just throw the mesh bag with hops into the same primary fermentation vessel? I’m not a big fan of racking the beer to secondary, I’d rather just keep the risks to a minimum and dry hop in the already sterilized and oxygen free environment, and keep the beer on the yeast cake for cleanup purposes.
Are there downsides to this when compared to dry hopping in a separate secondary vessel?
While I think you should not really worry about transferring and O2 exposure…
I cannot think of any downside of what you propose.
Personally, I always crash,
and then transfer and rack on top of a bunch of whole flowers…just seems more el’natural to me.
Keep her warm and good luck.
Can’t really answer the question as I am also a newbie dry-hopper, but this raises another question for me. It sounds like both posters are dry hopping with hops straight from the bag. Are the hops sufficiently clean that you don’t have to worry about them contaminating the beer?
The only time I previously dry hopped I used pellets, boiled the hop bag, added the pellets to a bit of boiled water and poured the water/pellet solution into the boiled bag. Then I dropped the bag into the secondary, all sterile like. Is all this boiling a waste of time?
Yes, it is. By the time you dry hop, the alcohol content and low pH of the beer make it very resistant to infection. In addition, hops have antibacterial properties. Bottom line is that I’ve dry hopped hundreds of batches, never sanitized the hops, and never had a problem from it.
Denny, do you sanitize the bag?
Yeah, I put it in a bowl of water in the microwave for a few minutes. I’m not sure why I do it that way, since I always have StarSan around at the point I’ll be dry hopping! Either way is fine, but I definitely recommend sanitizing the bag.
Does the microwave work?
It does, we used to sanitize baby bottles in the microwave. You can even get gadgets to “sterilize” stuff with steam in the microwave.
We never really did baby bottles, as my son was all about having it on draught, but I am aware of the things you mean. My wife, who is a breastfeeding counsellor has a lot to say about how the ‘sterilizers’ don’t bottles get sterile. Still, sanitized is frequently enough.
Yeah, I didn’t believe they really sterilized either, but I never tested it. And on draught is really nice if you can get all you want 
+10!! LMAO!!
Don’t know how this topic got turned but I’ll twist it ever further.
Children don’t need a lot of super sanitizing.
The more they are exposed to and the earlier the better. A good dose of bacteria from Mom’s “taps” is a very good thing.
Everybody wants to outlaw drugs, antibiotics for kids (except in extreme cases) is a good place to start. Being sick young is what makes them strong in adulthood.
This is Tubercle’s observation, If you need an opinion, just ask.
OK. back to brewing type stuff…
I’m all for the non-super sanitizing of kids. Bugs are good in the building of immunity.
This is one of the points my wife makes. Raw milk (whatever creature it comes from) is stacked with cultures that stave off infection. Sure there will be souring over time, but one literally has hours before milk in its raw state will spoil at room temperature.
Completely agree with the non-sterilization of bottles etc. Little Corbi is getting his teeth now, so we’re weaning him off draft and onto bottles, and frankly as long as the bottle is clean I don’t see what the problem is. I’m not going to give him a bottle that’s had formula in it for several hours, but at the same time I’m not going to spend bloody 15 minutes boiling everything whenever he wants some milk.
Same goes for gluten, peanuts, all those other ‘allergens.’ I think kids are much more allergy-sensitive these days because people freak out about what to feed 'em. Even my wife, who is pretty on the level on all this sort of stuff, has reservations about giving him wheat products. I figure as long as we’re not giving him rotten food, it’s gonna be OK for him.
Of course we DO only go the all-natural route. Formula is organic, teething biscuits are organic, bottle is BHPA (or whatever it is) free. No refined sugars, ever.
For the OP: When I dry hop, I just throw 'em in there, no bag. I’m not terribly concerned about sediment, etc.
When I dry hop, I’m thinking about putting a stainless steel sanitized bolt in the bag with the hops so it doesn’t just float on top, and I’d tie a string to it so it sat somewhere in the middle of the liquid suspended. The stainless steel bolt should not cause any off flavors right?
The stainless shouldn’t cause any off flavors. Lots of folks talk about using glass marbles too - no off flavors there either.
I often dry hop with SS in the hop bag - all in a SS corny keg!
I used some bolts in my last IPA to weigh down the hop bag, It worked well but I needed a little more weight to keep it submerged. I like the marble idea…
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I don’t weight hop bags and dry hopping doesn’t seem to suffer for it. I think you guys are doing too much work!
Me too, Denny. 
Everybody has a yard full of rocks. A clean and sterile (ie, boiled) rock is just as inert as ss bolts or anything else. Save a trip to the hardware store.
Occam’s Razor.