Dry Hopping w/Cones - How Much Weight

[Rosie]

Hey guys,

I did my first dry hop and think I've finally got the aroma I was looking for ,however, like most things it didn't all go to plan.

Does anyone have a rule of thumb for how much weight I need to put into a mesh bag of whole hops before it will sink?

I am using 2 kg of cones. I heat sanitised a bunch of spare stainless bits to go in the bag...but it wasn't enough...can anyone give me a good guess on how many kg I need to get the damn thing to sink properly?

Cheers,
Jeff

[John Dean]

Weight

Jeff,

I use about 2 Lbs of stainless to weigh down 5 Lbs of cones in my mesh bag. Works for me, but when it sinks it can choke off the outlet sometimes. To remedy that I bend a stainless ladle handle into its cup and stick that into the outlet to make a raised dome. It will hold the bag up enough to allow the beer through without tearing the bag.


Cheers,
John Dean
Blind Tiger Brewery

[dick murton]

We simply hung the hops in a "string" bag and kneeded it in the beer to wet it reasonably well and then after a few hours they sank ok and we ended up getting decent hop aromas. We preferred not to let the bag sink to the bottom as it tended to get smothered in yeast and trub and we did not extract as much of the hop oils as we wanted.

We stated off using about double the hopping rate in cask, to compensate for the shorter contact time. Not having done it for a while, I can't remember what rate we settled on - this is obviously a very personal thing anyway.

Cheers

[Rosie]

Thanks John I will give it a go closer to your spph (spare parts per hop) ratio...

I'm adding after vigorous fermentation in Grundys, so I can suspend bag from lid to keep it from hitting bottom. I just need to get it to drop more below the surface.

Cheers,