Dry Hopped Beer: Racking through Cheese Cloth

Ingredients
1

Howdy all,

So, last night I bottled some Chinook IPA, which I had dry hopped with pellets sans a hop bag. I was concerned about trub getting into the bottles, so I bought some cheese cloth, tied it to the end of the auto siphon, sanitized, and started the transfer to the bottling bucket. At first, everything was fine, but eventually the trub collected in the cheese cloth around the intake gap and I started seeing tiny bubbles in the siphon flow. I removed the siphon to try to clean off some trub, re-sanitized, then resumed, and in short order the bubbles were back, ultimately becoming quite large (almost the diameter of the auto-siphon tube). At that point I decided trub is better than oxidation, so I removed the cheese cloth and finished bottling that way.

Anyway, I was pretty alarmed by the bubbles, as I’m guessing it was oxygen that I was seeing, although I suppose CO2 is at least as likely? Any thoughts on this? And, if it was oxygen, can I expect this beer to go stale fairly quickly?

I think next time I will try putting cheese cloth on the other end of the siphon, and will leave a lot of space for the trub to collect.

2

As long as there were no leaksin your auto siphon, the bubbles you saw were comprised of CO2. The clogged cheese cloth was restricting the flow and knocking co2 out of solution. This will not affect the beers longevity.

You are correct, next time put the cheese cloth on the south end of the racking setup, and leave a lot of room for sediment to collect.

3

Cool, thanks greg. Wish I’d thought of moving the cheesecloth before I finished the transfer, but oh well. A little trub never hurt anyone!

:cheers:

4

I tie on a woman’s nylon knee high stocking to the end of the siphon that goes in the bucket, it works perfectly, not one speck of hops get in the bucket, and no bubbles.

5

I do the same thing…first couple times I tried it on the end that goes into the carboy…I experienced similar results, and actually was unable to maintain liquid flow with the autosiphone. Finally figured it out, and it works like a charm…