When Dry Hopping, do you just dump the pellet hops into the wort? Or do you put them in a muslin bag? I like the idea of using a Muslin Bag to decrease the amount of trub in the fermenter. Are there any downsides to using a muslin bag? I assume I should weight the bag slightly to get it to submerge, correct?
It depends on your setup. Hops will expand in the muslin bag and the interior hops may not come in contact with the wort and you will have more limited extraction. I throw them in naked and use a floating dip tube to avoid clogs.
I do it 'both ways'. For my ales (e.g., IPAs) I use a muslin bag along with sanitized marbles. Do not knot it down tightly since you need lots of room for the pellets to expand during the dry hopping phase. When it comes to dry hopping my lagers I just throw them in commando style and over the duration of the lagering phase the hop 'debris' completely settles out to the bottom. Try it both ways for your beers and see what 'works' in your homebrewery. Cheers!
I never got the "marble" thing. When hops are added to beer they float on top and eventually sink. Adding more contact time as they do so. In my mind, if you put marble in a bag to pull it to the bottom, you limit or would get less contact with the beer. Since the beer should be done fermenting, there should be no movement left inside. Am I wrong with this? When I DH in the fermenter I let them float and sink, usually 5 days, filtering them out as I transfer. If I DH in the keg, I put them in a 1 gallon paint (only for 2 oz or more) stainer bag and rack on top of them and seal the keg.
When free hops are floating the top portion of the hops are exposed to the headspace vs. the beer. When the hops in my muslin bag, weighed down with marbles, is inside the fermenter the hops are continuously exposed to beer. The hops within the bag are 'floating' in the middle and always exposed to beer. I have never seen the hops completely settle to the bottom of the fermenter. A CO2 saturation effect? Cheers!
I have tried a large tea ball infuser and naked in a metal conical fermenter. I have found the best option for me is to put them in naked and cold crash. Have not had a problem since,
I tried just throwing pellets into the fermenter, but I could never get them to settle fully. As I bottle all my beer, that caused the bottles to fob as the bit nucleate the bubbling. I now use a very oversize, fine-mesh bag, about a foot square, and that works fine. I agree that using a small bag means some of the hops are not even going to get wet!
A bonus to using a mesh bag over the auto-siphon/racking cane is that it helps keep a lot of the extra yeast out. I do it even on beers I don't dry hop.
I would like to hear how much cloudy hazy it imparts in the beer? or a better way.... I just add hops at near end of ferment so it's not clear but tasty.
