For the new brewer who may not have been sucked into the bevy of equipment purchases like a bunch of us other sick-o’s on this forum, this may not be the most practical. But I tinker and fuss with dry hop technique so I offer this to anyone as either advice or for critique:
My current preference is to go commando with the hop pellets, dumped right into the secondary. Let sit, for 3 days at 60-65 deg, then crash cool for another 2-3 days.
The cooling will drop the hops to the bottom. Then I use my fine-mesh bag tied around the racking cane inlet, to filter out hop debris en route to the keg.
Using pellets, I just crack open the bucket(rim sprayed with starsan) and dump them in. Leave it for a week, then cold crash, hit it with gelatin and bottle after another couple days- 1 week. The one time I tried to use a hop bag on the bottom of my autosiphon, it got clogged and whether it was that or something else, I had an inconsistent carbonation- a couple bottle bombs, a couple flat and only about 1/3 just right. Just call me goldilocks… :cheers: