I brew mostly lagers and light ales. Thus, I think I’ve dry hopped one beer in the past 8 years. (Lakefront Fixed Gear, and man, it was good.) So I’ve got a session IPA that’s been in the primary plenty long and I need to get it off the yeast. My kegs are full and don’t see getting this beer in the keg for another month or so.
My preferred method is to dry hop in the keg using a hop bag I weigh down with a marble. Can’t do that this time. As I’m going to secondary this beer, I’d prefer to dry hop in the secondary so it’s ready to go soon after I keg it.
Getting a hop bag down the neck of a carboy sounds like a PITA, so I was thinking I’d just dump the pellets into the secondary.
Anybody know how well that works and how long it takes for the hops to settle?
[quote=“pkrone”]I brew mostly lagers and light ales. Thus, I think I’ve dry hopped one beer in the past 8 years. (Lakefront Fixed Gear, and man, it was good.) So I’ve got a session IPA that’s been in the primary plenty long and I need to get it off the yeast. My kegs are full and don’t see getting this beer in the keg for another month or so.
My preferred method is to dry hop in the keg using a hop bag I weigh down with a marble. Can’t do that this time. As I’m going to secondary this beer, I’d prefer to dry hop in the secondary so it’s ready to go soon after I keg it.
Getting a hop bag down the neck of a carboy sounds like a PITA, so I was thinking I’d just dump the pellets into the secondary.
Anybody know how well that works and how long it takes for the hops to settle?
Thanks.
pete[/quote]
Just dry hopped my Chinook IPA by dumping pellets into the beer. It worked just fine. At first some of the pellets sink and some float. By next day all of the pellets have expanded into a layer on the top. I would give the carboy a little wiggle (no splashing) to make some of the hops begin to sink. I then let it sit for about 3 days. I gave it a little wiggle again to get the hops to sink some more. By 7 days, about 95% had settled to the bottom. I racked beer into a keg using a Muslin bag as my filter. Basically I had very clear beer. I would use this method again.
+1. I just dry hopped an IPA with a little over 2ozs of pellets for 7 days. I threw them right in to the primary. I used the same “wiggle” as Torich, and I filtered through a sanitized paint strainer bag. Worked very well for me.
+1. I just dry hopped an IPA with a little over 2ozs of pellets for 7 days. I threw them right in to the primary. I used the same “wiggle” as Torich, and I filtered through a sanitized paint strainer bag. Worked very well for me.[/quote]
This is my method as well. If you want to be extra sure, cold crash it for a couple of days. It’ll drop right out.
