So this is my first batch I've made and I have the dry hopped using pellet hops and a muslin bag and suspended it in my secondary fermentor, a glass carboy. So now I am getting ready to bottle and I dont know if I should leave the dry hop in the car boy and rack it to my bottling bucket with it still in there and hopefully prevent excess particles from going into my bottling bucket or for the bag out of the carboy squeezing it to no end and depositing extra particles into the bucket. Anyone?
I'll assume u have a glass carboy with the thin neck. In that case rack with the bag inside. You will dump a lot of hop flecks into the beer if you try to pull thru a fat bag of wet hops.
My first brewing job was pulling the little muslin bags of hops out of every cask. I had to pick and pick and pick at them until I got enough out that I could get the bag through. That usually ended up with a 'pop' and yeast and hop juice my face! Have fun!
Well, now that you have the dry hopping issue settled time to move on to removing a swollen bag of hops from a glass carboy. They fit going in just fine when dry. Not so much coming out when wet. You are probably going to need to empty the bag inside the carboy. Maybe you'll be lucky. But in reality you don't get much choice here. Rack the beer with the bag inside. Cheers.
So this is my process if it helps. -Ferment in glass carboys -Leave beer in primary the whole time -Dry hop in primary for 3-5 days/loose pellets, just dump them in -Cold crash beer for 2 days around 35f. It will settle out the hops and yeast -Rack beer above the trub/yeast/hops -Rack beer into keg -The first few pints will have some hop matter but eventually pour clear I know you said that you bottle and you may not have the ability to cold crash but a little investment in some equipment goes a long way. It has benefited my end product tremendously. Good luck man
Leave the bag in and rack out. If you try to pull it out now. You'll probably just create a mess and make yourself really angry.
I throw dry hops directly into my bucket. When I'm racking to bottle, I cover the intake of the autosiphon with a grain bag. That gives it all the filtration I need. Usually I get pretty good clarity in the final product, all things considered.
