Hi
I am a newbie and I am considering a “dry hopping”, but I have some concerns about using hop bags (sanitization) or just dropping the pellets in a secondary (or primary).
What do you thing about the following method to add hop aroma to the beer:
Boil water in a Erlenmeyer flask (resulting ~ 200 ml)
Chill it (68-80 F) , maybe adding a little bit of alcohol (pure or vodka)
Drop your favorite hop pellets in it
Cover the opening with a sanitized foil and let it settle for a few days
Pour the liquid (living most of the sediment or precipitate behind) in the bottling bucket, with the inverted sugar used for carbonation, or in the primary fermenter for a couple days when most of the fermentation is over, like a “Dry” Hopping”.
Thank you
Ummm sounds complicated. Save yourself the time and just toss your hops into the fermenter after the primary fermentation and the yeast has dropped out. No fears of contamination.
Unnecessary, complicated and poor results. Brewers have been using hop bags or just putting the dry hops in the beer for hundreds of years. Don’t overthink it.
When I dry hop in the keg I first put the muslin hop socks in the rice cooker and steam “autoclave” them for about 30 minutes. Might not be necessary but it makes me feel better. Never know where a hop sock has been.
My hop bags are utterly disgusting looking. Many, many batches of beer under their drawstrings. I toss 'em in a bowl of Star San for a few minutes, wring 'em out then add the hops, a weight and toss 'em into the fermenter or keg, where ever I want the hops. Seriously…never a problem. I even (shame on me) neglected to clean them immediately after use one time and they molded. Scraped the mold off, washed and bleached the bags and I continue to use them.
I would never worry about contamination of a beer just through adding hops…remember, when dry hopping there’s alcohol in there already and the hops are recognized as having antibacterial properties.
I just dump pellets right in. No need for hop sock. But when I used to use hop socks, I boiled them first. But the hops - those are naturally antiseptic. I don’t think anyone is losing batches of beer due to contamination from dry hopping. So RAHAHB!
Just to be clear: you dump them right in the bucket? I’ve worked out that the mantra around here is to skip the secondary except for adding fruit and (I thought) dry hopping. This thread sounds more like “chuck 'em in the bucket” to me.
If you want to keep the yeast, rack to secondary then add the dry hops. If you don’t care to keep the yeast, throw em’ in when the beer is done and the yeast drops. I do both pretty evenly.
^^^^This is the ticket. I personally rack my IPAs into a secondary onto the dry hops. Many do it this way and many dry hop in the primary upon completion of fermentation. This has been debated a zillion times on this forum. I reuse my yeast so I move the beer, if I didn’t, I’d probably dry hop in the primary. Whether you bag your hops or not, I think it’s really personal preference. You will figure out what works the best for you… I don’t think making a hop/vodka concoction will be it for ya though
I dry hop with sanitized stainless steel tea balls - the kind used to brew loose tea with. Just remember hat the pellet hops expand greatly - I don’t put a full ounce of pellets in the ball and have used up to 4 balls in a real hoppy dry hopped IPA.
For me, dry hops in the fermenter are pellets no bags whenever possible and in the keg it’s whole hops in sterilized muslin socks. I really don’t like using pellets in the keg even in a sock unless I’m not concerned with clarity.
I’ve found that they yeast can have not so good effects on dry hops, so these days I rack to secondary for dry hopping whether I intend to reuse the yeast or not.
Yep. The old conventional wisdom was to add to primary as krausen subsided. I did it for years. This works much better. Better, longer lasting aroma IMO.
I have not noticed a difference, but have not tried side by side either. Next time I do 10 gallons of something dry hopped, I’ll do it both ways and see what I think.
