Dry Hopping

[marmite]

What system of dry hopping do people find most effective.
For example
1) Is it okay to keep the hops in a bag or are they better loose?
2) How long to dry hop for?

To date I've used a hop bag weighed down with a couple of SS sockets but wonder if there is a more effective method.

 

[froidy]

I use a hop bag weighed down with marbles and a piece of nylon string to get it sitting in the middle of the wort (not on the bottom or floating on the top) I always sanitise the bag, marbles and string first, drop the hops in (50g) after 9 x days in the fermenter, leave for 5 x days then bottle. Works for me Did it once without a bag and chucked the hops in loose.....took me about 2 x hours longer to bottle 30 long necks....never again! Haha

 

[Strongarm]

Following on from some encouragement on here I dry hopped straight into the FV for the first time last time, giving them a little stir with a sanitised spoon to get wet. I then wrapped a bit of stainless steel mesh (20 gauge, £3 from ebay) around the syphon when transferring to bottling bucket. It was very liberating not using a bag.

So far always dry hopped for 7 days.

 

[Duxuk]

I also just chuck 'em in. They don't seem to cause me any trouble when syphoning.
You need to wait 'til the activity has fallen to a crawl, so usually about 7 days in. Then leave it for another week to fibish and start to clear. If you dry hop too early the activity will cause isomerisation of the hops (bittering) so rather defeats the object of getting the freshest flavours.:thumb:

 

[Strongarm]

I think I probably could have got away without the steel mesh when syphoning

 

[Cactus Jack]

Dry hopped using a puree straight into the FV. Acted like pellets and sank to the bottom pretty quickly.