I am currently Dry Hopping with 3oz of Citra in 2 separate mesh bags. I thought they would sink. They didnt.I even weighted one down with a stainnless steel spoon (all I had) So, now they are floating on the top. Is that ok? Would Stirring help? If so, stir with a sterilized spoon? or can I just kind of rock the carboy slighlty. Also, does anyone use those stainless tea balls to dry hop with, I have another IPA that I want to dry hop in the keg and want ot know the best option for this. thanks.
Whole hops or pellets? I've only ever used pellets. For dry hopping in the fermentor, I just throw them in and they sink after a week. Then I just rack off of them. In your current situation, I'd just let it ride. Not much you can do unless you want to try to fish the bags out and empty the hops into the fermentor. For dry hopping in a keg, I use pantyhose. Those tea balls seem small, like you'd have to pack the hops in very tightly, which will reduce surface contact.
Just throw them into the secondary fermentor and rack on top. Try to limit the headspace in the fermentor (5 gallon batch in a 5 gallon fermentor) for better results. Rack off when ready to bottle or keg. Sometimes the siphon can get clogged when using a bunch of hops, but this can be fixed by putting a sanitized hop bag (or pantyhose) over the racking cane.
I recently did a 2 oz dry hop with pellets in a Muslin bag for the first time... I put 5 sanitized marbles in the bag and this wasn't nearly enough weight to get the bag to sink but after a week I did get good aroma out of the dry hop float. I'm just gonna go back to tossin the pellets in and cold crashing to get them to fall out after desired aroma is reached.
Your other option is just to add more marbles. I always dry hop by placing 1-2 ounces of pellets in a muslin bag. I add a big handful of marbles to the bag as well. Cheers!
I've realized I'm just too lazy to sanitize a bag and marbles so I'm going back to the ever easy bagless dump.
My advice would be just to let it sit for now and not stir. You may encounter a little less efficient aroma/flavor pickup because you have less surface contact with the beer, but it's not the end of the world. I wouldn't recommend stirring just because you are more likely to oxidize the beer and ruin stability. In the future, just use pellets and no bag, and once the hops drop in a week or so rack the beer off into kegs/bottles.
