Barley Wine Dry Hop quandary

[Fathand]

My brewing buddies and I brewed 6-gallons of Barley Wine a few months ago. Before we moved it to 2ndary we dry hopped it with 5 oz of whole cone Cascades. We moved it to a 5-gallon glass carboy and bottled the extra gallon or so..

The plan was to let the 5-gallons sit for a few months and then bottle. We have a ton of extra Cascade that we would like to use to dry hop the beer again.

My quandary is how to add whole hops to my 5-gallon carboy. It is already pretty full so even if I wanted to, space will not allow me to just jam a bunch of cones in there.

Should I...
1. Re-rack the beer onto the desire amount of hops for a few days then bottle
2. Try a hop tea (have read conflicting info on the worth of hop teas)
3. Add hop oil
4. Just bottle it as is

Thoughts?

 

[smagee]

That's an interesting quandary. I think in your place, I'd just go ahead with bottling and save the hops for another batch. Re-re-racking would open it up to more risk of oxidation than I'd prefer, and I'm a bit doubtful that hop tea would give you the same effect as dryhopping.

I haven't worked with hop oil enough to pass judgement on it, but it might be an option. How does the beer taste as-is?

 

[Fathand]

I have only had hydrometer samples but one of my buddies cracked into his share of the extra gallon and said it tasted fantastic.

 

[l1ranger]

never used them, but how about these

http://www.hopunion.com/hoparomatabs.html

 

[broadbill]

I'd probably bottle as-is....BW is supposed to be a malt-forward beer, and if you are going to keep these bottles around for awhile the dry-hop character will most likely fade away with time anyway.