dry hop in muslin bag?

[JLivermore]

Is there any reason not to do this?

Now when I bottle/keg beer I've dry hopped I rubberband some cheesecloth over one end of the siphon (sanitized of course) otherwise the hops gunk will clog up the keg and cause problems.

But is a total pain in the ass; the only way I can do it is to keep my hand in the beer and constantly use my thumb or forefinger to knock hops out of the way to keep the flow going. It takes forever and is required near constantly as I get further down.

I really like hoppy beer but am always slightly relieved when there's no dry hopping just cuz it makes kegging and bottling so much easier.

Would dry hopping in a bag like that give me all the hop wonderfulness with none of the hop mess? Or is it much better to chuck them in and let them spread out in the beer?

I use pellets by the way.

 

[unionrdr]

I always use hop sacks. Everything's much cleaner that way. Especially when washing the yeast. And the difference between using sacks & tossing them in loose is pretty small. I've done both,& tossing them loose is just to big of a mess. Even with my large strainer. Just use the bags & save yourself the time.

 

[beaker11]

I always use a reusable hop bag that has a finer mesh than muslin bags and I don't end up with hop gunk in the beer. Pretty cheap, I think well worth it.

 

[JLivermore]

Thanks for the responses; can't wait to try this.

I think I'm gonna do a 60 cent muslin bag just cuz 60 cents to chuck it and forget it would be so worth getting rid of one of the most pain in the ass steps in brewing...

 

[unionrdr]

I'm kinda thrifty myself. I have a method to get the muslin sacks clean as new again with little effort on my part. I have a couple grain sacks & a bunch of hop sacks this way. It gives me plenty of sacks to hop with for consecutive batches without constantly running out to buy more.

 

[Entrepreneur640]

I'm kinda thrifty myself. I have a method to get the muslin sacks clean as new again with little effort on my part. I have a couple grain sacks & a bunch of hop sacks this way. It gives me plenty of sacks to hop with for consecutive batches without constantly running out to buy more.

Are you going to let us in on your secret uniondr?

 

[NadoHawk]

If I were using a carboy, I would not use a hop sack.

 

[JLivermore]

i use a pail / bucket. why wouldn't you do it in a carboy?

 

[unionrdr]

Are you going to let us in on your secret uniondr?

Ok,here we go. I first untie the knot at the top of the sack,& turn them inside out in a blue plastic shopping bag for disposal. Trying to make sure I get as much hop grainy gunk off them as possible without spending too much time at it. Then rinse them in an empty sink to get the rest of the grainy hop stuff off. Before starting any of this,I have a small sauce pan on the stove (ours are all stainless steel) about half full of water set to boil.
Then go through the empty & rinse routine. When the water boils,I dump them in to boil for about 5-10 minutes. Then into a small tupperware container covered with PBW (1.5oz per gallon of water) to soak for 5 days or so with the tight fitting lid on. When they look white again,I rinse them thoroughly,squeeze'em out & hang up to dry.
My desk lamp being a clamp on type is great for this. I've tried leaving out the boiling part,but the sacks dry kind of stiff. But they stillcame out white as new.
I know this sounds like a lot of work,but in truth it isn't. Total time I'm involved with the process is about 30 minutes total.

 

[NadoHawk]

i use a pail / bucket. why wouldn't you do it in a carboy?

Because a carboy has a narrow-neck and it's much easier to just dump out loose debrief than try to fish out a drenched hop sack out of the carboy.