I’ll be dry hopping for the first time shortly.
Adding hops at a half way time in the fermentor seems like adding a non sterile item into the brew.
Can this be a problem? If not, why?
Hops are natural germ fighters so that helps. Most commercial hops are also in nitrogen flushed packs. That is mostly to preserve them though. You beer will have some alcohol content and a protective layer of CO2 in the fermenter head space also.
All that said you can certainly Pasteurize them by heating them up to about 170° then use the water/hops solution to “dry hop”. I have always just either tossed them in the fermenter or sanitized the container, like a muslin bag or spice ball (a giant size tea ball) added the hops and tossed it in.
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For dry hopping, I always use muslin sacks. I toss the sacks in the sanitizer, squeeze em out then put hops in and drop into the keg.
Rad
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I don’t ever sanitize them and I no longer use a bag but when I did I would sanitize the bag but not the hops. I have never had an issue. As @hd4mark hops are said to be antibacterial in their special way.
I added unsanitized hops to the wort. It is not a problem for the reasons explained by hd4mark. I would not sanitize them with 170F because you will lose some of the hop oils as explained below. I would add, that they only need to sit in the wort for 3-5 days. If you leave them in a lot longer it has been reported that you can get a grassy flavor in your beer. I have not left them in long enough to find out.
If you want to get a little more sophisticated, stop your mash cool down at 140 F and hold it at 120-140 F with very low flame/heat. Then add your dry hops. This does a good job of extracting hop oil flavors without boiling away the flavors. Myrcine boils at 147 F so you will lose it if you are at or above that temperature. This is not the only hop oil present and others boil at a higher temperature but Myrcine has the highest percentage in most hops. For this reason I add flavor hops at 140 F and below. I have not optimized the time and temperature but I leave it for 30 minutes at 120 to 140F when I make a freshly squished. Note others recommend higher extraction temperatures like 160-170 but I avoid that high temperature to keep the myrcine. Wish I could find the results of beer experiment on extraction temperature and flavor to see if anyone can taste difference between 160 F and 130F:)
There is a millennium of brewing with hops. Let’s call that amount of data proof.
