My typical MO has been to do the dry hop for 1 week and then simply leave the bag of hops in the keg after it goes into the kegerator. I have done this since I noticed a significant drop off in aroma when I did not leave the dry hops in the keg for my Nugget Nectar clone from Craft Beer for the Homebrewer. After reading through posts here, I figured what the heck and have been leaving the bags in the keg for the duration after the room temp dry hop and have not noticed nearly as much aroma loss. May just be me, curious to see how others handle it as I’m always looking to improve.
I suppose if I have an available keg I could just keg and DH it at room temp. Then I could leave the bag in. I’ve certainly never noticed any ill effects from leaving the bag in. I’m just looking for increased aroma.
I have definitely noticed a difference between dry hopping at room temp and in the kegerator at 38ish. Noticeably more aroma when dry hopped at room temp. I only dry hop in my basement and delay putting into rotation in the kegerator for carbing if it hasn’t had enough time yet. I have 6 kegs at the moment and only a two tap kegerator so I don’t bother with secondary anymore, give about 3-4 weeks in primary depending on what I have in cue then transfer to keg and when one is getting low, I add dry hops and typically kick the low one within a week. Then I put the fresh keg in to carb for a week. I got two kegs with my kegerator when I bought it, then bought two more on sale. SWMBO’s cousin scored 10 corny’s outside of a restaurant who were throwing them away, a little work to clean up and I got 2 free kegs out of the deal so now I have 6. Typically I brew one early in the year to age for Christmas so it’s nice to have a longer term storage keg available.
I could make up my mind on the IPA I have going now so I put half in the bucket for five days then discarded that bag and threw pore in the keg which I’ll leave in for the duration. It’s carbing now.
Oh how serendipitous the internet is. I just googled how to deal with hop fragments clogging a corny keg and found this forum thread as the first result. Hilariously, I was the original poster asking this question 2 years ago. I’m glad (or sad) to see I’m not alone with this problem, but I’m very happy to find there may be a solution with the SureScreen mentioned by blatz above.
Unfortunately, I am still left sitting here with a keg of 3 Floyds Gumballhead clone and no way to drink it due to a clog.
Typically I brew one early in the year to age for Christmas so it’s nice to have a longer term storage keg available.
