I used a giant stainless steel tea ball (I think it’s made for infusing spices into soups and mulled wine) to contain a couple ounces of tettnanger I used for bittering my Altbier last batch… it’s still fermenting, so I don’t know if the results were goof… but before I try it again, I was wondering if anyone has had bad experiences using something like this in lieu of a hop bag. Normally I use nothing to contain my hops, but when I brew with really large quantities of pellet hops, I need something to keep the hops from clogging my system.
I use a tea ball for “dry hopping” in the keg, use nylon bags for hops in the boil.
I just bought one to use for vanilla beans in the keg. It’s oblong shaped, made for soups 'n stuff. Plan to use it for DH too. I’m curious how yours works out…
I started using one a few batches ago. For pellet hops it seems to work fine. Some of the finer stuff gets through the mesh. For leaf hops it works perfect.
The ball I am using has a 4 inch diameter. It is plenty big for most hop additions.