Dry Hopping Using Veg Bag?

[Davy6Mac]

Have done 16 AG brews on my homebrew journey, with 6 of these being dry hopped, have been using Supermarket re-usable veg bags but find cleaning them a real pain trying to remove all traces of crud etc when i have bottled the brews.
Does anybody know if there is a supplier who makes a large scale Stainless Steel tea strainer type thing or a hop spider with a lid that screws on/off.

 

[roboto]

Something like this?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hopper-Sta...cphy=1007009&hvtargid=pla-1003419560379&psc=1
I also use Sainsbury's veg bags but I use them inside out so that the stitching is on the outside, that helps stop muck from accumulating in the corners.
I dump out the hops and rinse them under the tap, once they're dry I shake them out which gets rid of most of the left over hop bits. Then I dunk in Starsan before the next dry hop.

All in all not that bad to keep clean, plus cheap and disposable if I need to get rid of if they break.

 

[Clint]

What he said...use inside out. When I used to use a hop bag I did this... afterwards they were rinsed and left on the line til next time, in boiled them before using again.
Now I just chuck the hops in and cold crash before bottling.

 

[Buffers brewery]

Can't help with the stainless steel bit but, just for interest, I'm working on a bit of a vanity project right now. I wanted to dry hop without taking the bucket lid off so have produced the Buffers brewery Dry Hopper.

The white container can hold up to 200 grams of loose hop pellets (I think) and is secured to the underside of the bucket lid using a magnet pack (the black thing).

The assembly is held closed by the "silver" magnet on the lid. At the appropriate time, the single silver magnet is removed which allows the hopper to drop open to dispense the hops into the beer.

The hopper is nylon so easy to clean and sanitise and with a bit of luck doesn't get dunked into the beer. Doesn't answer your question but thought it might be of interest

 

[Clint]

How will that cope with one of those great big monster fermentations?

 

[Buffers brewery]

Good question @Clint . Yet to find out! As the hopper closes almost up to the lid I’m hoping that any krausen froth will follow the gas flow up the blow-off tube but needs to be tested. As soon as my f-fridge is empty I need to do a dry hop brew as a test.

 

[Sandozer]

Can't help with the stainless steel bit but, just for interest, I'm working on a bit of a vanity project right now. I wanted to dry hop without taking the bucket lid off so have produced the Buffers brewery Dry Hopper.
View attachment 47416
The white container can hold up to 200 grams of loose hop pellets (I think) and is secured to the underside of the bucket lid using a magnet pack (the black thing).
View attachment 47417
View attachment 47418
The assembly is held closed by the "silver" magnet on the lid. At the appropriate time, the single silver magnet is removed which allows the hopper to drop open to dispense the hops into the beer.
View attachment 47419
View attachment 47420
The hopper is nylon so easy to clean and sanitise and with a bit of luck doesn't get dunked into the beer. Doesn't answer your question but thought it might be of interest

Quite ingenious and cunningly simple ! More powerful neodymium magnets and you may get away with a weighted hop bag ?

 

[Buffers brewery]

Hi @Sandozer . The magnets I'm using can cope with 500 grams in the hopper. The 200 grams of loose hop pellets is more to do with the volume of the bucket.

 

[Sandozer]

I like it, my brewing lid will not allow rigid structures, brew#9 with the cling film. I really should move on ! :) Lol.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Our first dry hop was with a bag but found the hop pellets do swell alot when wet so the volume of the bag should be significantly greater than the wet volume of the pellets to allow some level of flow and mix inside the bag once the hop pellets have wetted and swelled; However I'm sceptical about the hop bag method full stop because there is not circulation of liquid in the fermentor so how is the goodness from the hops mixing with the beer in the fermenter and spreading out that hop flavour and aroma?? I suspect you pull most of the goodness out with the used bag.

So bunging the hops in 'naked' is the best bet ideally, but then we're told if the beer sits on hops in the fermenter for more than about 4 days you start to pick up grassy flavours, so if you're double dry hopping the first hop additions will be doing that so you need a way of pulling out the spent hops from the first hop addition as you add the second hop addition, so that drives you to use a bag or one a hop basket.

So not sure how to do this really if you wan to remove previous spent hop additions. All my dry hopped beers, though turned out well and perfectly delicious, have to got the fresh poppy hop aroma or flaovour as a decent commercial beet, so not sure what they're doing that I'm not. I',m alway tempted to just double the recipe hop addition to ensure a stronger aroma and flavour.

 

[foxy]

Have done 16 AG brews on my homebrew journey, with 6 of these being dry hopped, have been using Supermarket re-usable veg bags but find cleaning them a real pain trying to remove all traces of crud etc when i have bottled the brews.
Does anybody know if there is a supplier who makes a large scale Stainless Steel tea strainer type thing or a hop spider with a lid that screws on/off.

As Clint said throw in loose and cold crash, beer will drop clear with hops and yeast at the bottom of the fermenter. Forget the bags. Can you really be sure you are getting the maximum utilisation when the hops are constrained in a bag?

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

As Clint said throw in loose and cold crash, beer will drop clear with hops and yeast at the bottom of the fermenter. Forget the bags. Can you really be sure you are getting the maximum utilisation when the hops are constrained in a bag?

I’ve always used the supermarket fruit and veg bags but always cold crash and fine with Gelatine too. Very tempted to just try chucking my dry hops in next time

 

[crowcrow]

Our first dry hop was with a bag but found the hop pellets do swell alot when wet so the volume of the bag should be significantly greater than the wet volume of the pellets to allow some level of flow and mix inside the bag once the hop pellets have wetted and swelled; However I'm sceptical about the hop bag method full stop because there is not circulation of liquid in the fermentor so how is the goodness from the hops mixing with the beer in the fermenter and spreading out that hop flavour and aroma?? I suspect you pull most of the goodness out with the used bag.

So bunging the hops in 'naked' is the best bet ideally, but then we're told if the beer sits on hops in the fermenter for more than about 4 days you start to pick up grassy flavours, so if you're double dry hopping the first hop additions will be doing that so you need a way of pulling out the spent hops from the first hop addition as you add the second hop addition, so that drives you to use a bag or one a hop basket.

So not sure how to do this really if you wan to remove previous spent hop additions. All my dry hopped beers, though turned out well and perfectly delicious, have to got the fresh poppy hop aroma or flaovour as a decent commercial beet, so not sure what they're doing that I'm not. I',m alway tempted to just double the recipe hop addition to ensure a stronger aroma and flavour.

I throw in loose, but don't remove if I'm double hopping. I find personally that 3 days is plenty of loose dry hopping - don't seem to get much more flavour after thst and things can then die down, so you can double hop in 6 days. Then a 3 day cold crash and then carb and drink!

 

[Sandozer]

I’ve always used the supermarket fruit and veg bags but always cold crash and fine with Gelatine too. Very tempted to just try chucking my dry hops in next time

My latest brew was using a nylon supermarket veg bag, it worked well and seemed to drain easily at the end.
Must say I am tempted to go commando on my next brew . I can only cold crash in the garage, so dependant on ambient temperature.

 

[Buffers brewery]

Having just done a brew without using hop bags I’m now of the opinion that hop bags are good for containing leaf hops during the boil but dry hopping is best done with un-bagged pellets. My reasoning, such as it is, is that during the boil there’s enough agitation to penetrate the hop bag but not so much in the FV.

 

[Clint]

I like it, my brewing lid will not allow rigid structures, brew#9 with the cling film. I really should move on ! :) Lol.

That's voyeurism...

 

[Fred mercuree]

Can someone explain what dry hopping and cold crash is please?

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Can someone explain what dry hopping and cold crash is please?

This may help -

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/a-newbies-guide-to-dry-hopping-your-beer.61045/
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/when-to-cold-crash-condition.78495/

 

[Hoppyland]

Can someone explain what dry hopping and cold crash is please?

Terrym's summary on dry hopping is pretty much all you need to know.
Cold crashing is a method of speeding up maturation of beer. It's usually done soon after fermentation is finished, and the beer is reduced in temperature in a fridge. This does two things. It stops any further fermentation, which may otherwise slowly trickle on for quite a while, and facilitates the yeast dropping out of the beer to leave it clear. It also encourages "chill haze": this is usually caused by proteins in the beer, and can be a problem in beers that appear clear, but become cloudy when chilled for serving. Once the proteins have "gelled" at low temperature, they will settle out as long as the temperature remains low, and this can be speeded up by finings such as gelatine.

Neither process is necessary with all beers.
If you want a heavy hit of hop aroma, so that your beer smells powerfully of hops, then dry hopping is the only way to go. This can be either the American IPA styles, using very aromatic citrussy hops like Simcoe, Amarillo, Citra etc, but also for more British styles where Goldings or Fuggle can be quite dominant if used as a big dry hop addition.
If you don't want such dominant hop aroma in your beer, then don't dry hop. Try instead hop addition at the end of the boil, as the beer is cooling, to add hoppy flavour without such powerful aroma.
Cold crashing is entirely optional. I never do it. But, I'm happy to wait a month or so for my beer to clear before kegging. Also, I would never dream of serving beer below about 15°C. I do not subscribe to barbaric Antipodean or American practices, so chill haze is not an issue for me.

 

[Festival Man]

Excellent. and,of course we wait for the priming conditioning,so no rush. Cheers.