Dry hopping pellets without hop bag..show of hands

Who DH’s pellets without a hop bag?..show of hands

I’ve done it either in primary and/or secondary. After 5 or 6 days, I swirl the carboy gently, then a day or two later all the hops have settled to the bottom and the beer is clear. I would recommend avoiding DHing w/out a bag in the keg tho…just learned that lesson on my current IPA. I’ve never used more than 2 ozs though, so I am not sure how well more than that would settle.

I don’t use a bag unless I’m dry hoping in the keg. 24 to 48 hours cold crash and it’s all on the bottom.

I use a bag because I use a conical. Tried it without once and learned the hard way about those hops plugging the racking tube…

I use buckets and have never used a bag with pellets dry hopping. My last few IPAs I dry hopped with 2oz for about a week in the secondary and everything settled to the bottom by bottling day. I’ll keep doing it that way until I run into an issue.

in the fermenter no bag in the keg use a bag.

I’ve used a bag before and the pellets swelled. Could barely get the bag out of the carboy.

I’ve done it without a bag for 7 days, gently swirling the carboy after 5 days, and the hop matter settled very well. Cold crashing sounds like a good idea, too (though I’ve yet to do it) I’ve also done it with hop bags, using a total of 2 oz. hop pellets - when I did it this way, I used 1/2 oz. pellets per bag (4 bags total), and they were easy to remove from the carboy one-by-one. I think that if your mindful & attentive of whatever process you decide on, it should be just fine!

my hand is not up

[quote=“sonex”]in the fermenter no bag in the keg use a bag.[/quote]+1

I’ve tried dry hopping with pellets both ways. I’ve had better success when using a hop bag to contain the hop particles and get just as good aroma . maybe I just don’t swirl it enough but I can never seem to get all of the hops to float to the bottom when dry hoping without a bag. I recently tried using a muslin bag tied to my auto siphon when racking to my bottling bucket and for some reason I noticed a lot of oxygen bubbles flowing through my siphon line which concerned me so I just snatched that sucker off.

dump’em in right into the carboy…call it a day.

I have done both… Bag and no bag. I have found the bag to inhibit the desired dry hop effect if you are doing more than one ounce (of pellets even) due to surface area issues from the bag becoming swelled up and just the outside areas of the bag infusing your beer with the desired hop aroma and leaving the inside basically untouched and sullen.

I am now a huge fan of just dumping those hops in bagless, and letting them ride. If you are in a warm climate like I am (in Florida), those pesky buggers will stay floating on top of your beer, and leave you wondering “how am I going to siphon around this?”. Just remove the airlock, put a stopper in, or sanitized aluminum foil with a rubber band around the neck of your carboy, and make some room in your fridge (remove shelves to accomodate it). Within a day in the cold, those hops will sink like a rock just like trub… Rack above it, and you have perfectly dry hopped beer with no mess in the bottling bucket or keg.

:cheers:

No bag here for wither leaf or pellets. I just line my bottling bucket with a sanitized paint strainer bag when I rack into it to catch any debris.

I dry hopped in the keg without a bag and figured all the hop material would settle to the bottom and I could sacrifice a few pints to get rid of it. NOT. I had floaters throughout the entire keg. Lesson learned.

Well the pick up is on the bottom where the hops are settling to. You clearly figured this out, but dry hops in a keg, without a bag is a bad idea.

No bag. IPA’s get a 1/2 gallon bump for losses, so 6G for 5G batches. That and an occasional agitation during dry hop, a week long cold crash, and my skills at racking, works great. Last dry hop was 4oz pellets…

When I had a bumper crop of homegrown hops, I did keg hopping and used a large SS tea infusor ball. Worked OK, but results were not really that much better than a dry hop in fermentor IMO.

I always DH loose but will say that pellet material sometimes lingers on top for several days to a week or more. Swirling helps, and most recently I cold crashed and this not only helped the hops drop but the beer seemed to clear up better.

Now THAT is an awesome idea! Why didn’t I think of that? LOL Thanks for sharing a great idea sir.

:cheers:

I haven’t tried dry hopping in the keg yet, but have tried the bag and no bag in the secondary and I’d say that I prefer the bag. Last time some particles got through despite cold crashing and my keg post clogged a little big. This forced me to have to take apart the post and clean it after a couple days of serving, which i did not like because i don’t like to crack that sanitary seal.