Sounds like either way works... I was wondering the same thing.
I have an APA that's been in primary two weeks, and am going to dry hop tomorrow for one more week. Wasn't sure which way to go with it. It's a three gal batch in a five gal better bottle; going to be adding 1 oz pellets. I have a 3 gal better bottle, so thought about using this as the secondary to reduce the head space. But since I'm only leaving it for one more week, the extra headspace shouldn't make much difference, right? Was thinking about just popping out the bung, feeding the pellets in a few at a time, then resanitizing and replacing the bung... This shouldn't let too much of the CO2 "protective blanket" out, I would think.
So leaning toward primary dry-hop instead of secondary (and I bottle, so the keg dry-hop isn't an option). The next question was whether to add them loose or in a bag. And if in a bag: just toss the bag in by itself, add some sanitized marbles and just drop it in, or add some marbles and tie some unflavored floss to it and lower it halfway down the carboy (so it doesn't float on top or sink all the way down to the trub layer right away)? Sounds like many have had good results just adding loose? Does seem the easiest way...
Thoughts? Thx...