Dry hopping with leaf hops

Alan Garrard · Jul 7, 2018

Hi, I’ve only started brewing this year using a Grain Father - fantastic kit. Tomorrow is brew 12 and I’m working on a Citra IPA. This is the 4th time with this recipe and it’s delicious! This time I want to dry hop using leaf instead of pellet to see the difference.
I’m going to bag my hops with a weight and drop them in my fermenter but I don’t like the idea of the hops sitting in the trub for a few days. I don’t want to transfer wort to a secondary. Should I suspend using sanitised string? Also, I will be crashing the temperature down to 4 degrees - should I remove the hops before crashing? Anyone wanting the recipe let me know, thanks.

NIGHTSKY BREWING · Jul 7, 2018

Top brewers agree dry hopping in warmer Wort when the yeast has flocculated and dropped out , because the the hop oils stick to the yeast cell walls ....pop over to a big thread called...Modern Dry Hopping....lets trash it out and find something New to beat the US boys.

Cheers Matt. Welcome to the Forum Alan..... were are you based

Alan Garrard · Jul 7, 2018

Thanks Matt, I’m from Charnock Richard near Chorley

Duxuk · Jul 7, 2018

You live 2 miles from me! I add dry hops loose and syphon for bottling. I have a little plastic cup on the bottom of the tube from the syphon. I sterilise a piece of net curtain material and tie this around the cup and it works well. Loose hops have a better chance of giving up their flavour than hops confined in a bag. They mainly float so the bulk could be removed with a sieve if you wanted to.

Alan Garrard · Jul 8, 2018

Duxuk said:
You live 2 miles from me! I add dry hops loose and syphon for bottling. I have a little plastic cup on the bottom of the tube from the syphon. I sterilise a piece of net curtain material and tie this around the cup and it works well. Loose hops have a better chance of giving up their flavour than hops confined in a bag. They mainly float so the bulk could be removed with a sieve if you wanted to.

Thanks Duxuk, just completed my brew so will be dry hopping in a week or so.

Dutto · Jul 9, 2018

I normally use a Hop Tea and introduce it into the Bottling Bucket at the same time as the carbonation sugar.

However, when Dry Hopping I transfer the brew into a second FV, add the hops (be they whole leaf or pellets) directly to the brew and then use one of these for syphoning it off into a PB or Bottling Bucket ...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M74BJW3/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

... attached to this copper syphon tube ...

To reduce the chance of introducing anything nasty into the brew, I put the hops directly into the 2nd FV.

The syphon filter always blocked up when using Hop Pellets (which is why I began to use a Hop Tea) but for the next brew I intend to use Hop Leaf directly into the FV.