dry hopping

[tomby von elders]

Hi all, when dry hopping is it best to put hops in a bag or add them strait to the fermenter. Any comments would be great.

[Ralph]

Much cleaner to put them in a bag... but there are risks of contamination. Make sure the bag is big enough to accommodate the hops when they swell in the beer.

Much easier to drop them straight in, but you can be left with bits floating around which can get into bottles/kegs if you do not have a strainer in line when transferring.

Both ways achieve the same thing.

[tomby von elders]

does it pay to put the bag in boiling water before adding hops to cut down the risks of contamination?

[Reece]

Yes it would

[Christian]

I just dump them straight in - can't be bothered with bags and the utilisation should be better. After a few days they sink and then I crash cool. I siphon off the top into a bottling bucket and never have more than a few bits make it past that stage.

[tomby von elders]

when you siphon off into your bottling bucket do you put co2 in the bucket so you don't oxidise your beer?

[Christian]

No CO2 - I've never noticed an issue with oxidisation. I'm mainly drinking my beer fresh but that is also true of aged beers (all bottle conditioned). I wouldn't worry about it. I'm fussy about having things clean and use Starsan for sanitisation but beyond that, some traditional problems are overrated IMO.

[Chad Keven]

just chuck it in bro

[tomby von elders]

cheers bro

[Peter Smith]

so if doing a single fermentation (no secondary) planning on a 14 day job, at what day would you add the dry hops?

[Crusader-Rob]

I'm the same, i use silicone hose to transfer. super easy.

[Chris Mills]

I've used bags and loose. I find I get better results (for filtering under pressure) with bags. I've got some handy loops welded to the inside of the lids for my fermenter to the bag can dangle in the beer and won't block the outlet from my CCV when filtering.

[Peter Smith]

how much nz fuggles pellots into a 23L ?   for a hoppy result