I'm curious how many of you put your dry hops in a (mesh)bag, for containment in the fermentor, as opposed to just tossing them in the fermentor loose? Any strong opinions out there? Also, has anyone started selling hops in a "tea-bag" format? Seems like a no-brainer if you could guarantee that the bag was clean. I've never seen one though...
I throw the pellets straight in the primary. And then use two paint strainer bags on the end of the auto siphon when transferring. It has worked well for me. I have only experienced two problems with it. One time I used one paint strainer bag and it got a little clogged which caused some air bubbles in my siphon tubing. All I had to do was adjust it and it was fine. The other time the dry hops did not sink to the bottom as much as usual and I ended up with a thick sludge on top of the beer. While siphoning and getting near the end it was really hard to see how much beer was left and I didn't want to get down into the yeast cake. I kind of had to guess where to stop the siphon. Luckily I got very little of the yeast cake and got all most all of the beer.
Pellets in a weighted bag, shortly after the krausen has dropped. It's what makes the most sense to me: I think the weight helps to ensure the hops submerge and lose whatever air is clinging to them, and dropping them in while the yeast is still relatively active gives the little buggers a chance to chow down on whatever oxygen might've been introduced. (I know, I know: some people will say this causes you to lose some aromatics. Just add more hops, then.) Then when I'm siphoning off, the bags help keep the hop matter out of the keg.
I double dry hop all of my hop forward beers. Once with pellets, no bag, directly into the fermentor after primary for 7 days. Then I cold crash, transfer to my keg and hop with leaf hops in a weighted bag.
I depends what I am doing for the DH. In primary I will usually use a bag so I can harvest the yeast cake w/o getting hops or pellet sludge. If I secondary (rack by forcing the beer with CO2) then I just drop it all in the secondary before racking and purge the head space, but secondary is fairly useless now with kegs unless I dry hop a sour that is getting bottled. In the keg I bag (double if pellets) with weight and tie off to the top. I have recently gone back to using bags in the boil as well since I couldn't get my filter to drain on my hoppy beers to use my pump and whirlpool. It was so nice to have a great whirlpool for 45 mins, 10-15 mins to chill, and run off 5.25 gallons of clear wort into a fermenter in under 5 minutes.
No. I dump them in and let them swim around and get to know the guys on the yeast boats and what not.
I use bags for both boil in the form of a tri-pod and draw string bag with glass marbles as weight for dry hopping.
Commando d-hopping w/pellets ==> #FAIL. Can't be bothered waiting till the wort clears or cold crashing or straining through a painter's bag or gelatinating or what'evah. Bag'em Dan-no
I usually don't bag pellets these days and just cold crash for 48 hours before racking as it seems to make them fall out of suspension. While the cold crash encourages hop oil loss to a small degree, I think I get better hop extraction to begin with by not using a hop bag.
My experiences are just about exclusively with pellet hops. These break up and sink and hang out with the trub. I don't bother to bag them. I don't use clarifying agents and I keg. If you want to deal with a bag and sanitizing it you'll probably do fine. IN SHORT: NO.