Beer Forum

do you guys add hop pellets straight to carboy or use a nylon bag?

Some folks bag 'em. Others don't.
Patience is key if you don't. They will eventually settle, but it takes a while.
Sanitation is key if you do. Boil the bag and have a few stainless steel or glass weights in there to keep the hops down in the beer, (Boil the weights, too). Glass marbles are great for this.

HTH-

if i crash cool it will the hops settle out faster or does that matter

Directly to the fermenter. I would boil the hop bag if I used one.

They settle out in less than a week.

hummpledinger wrote:if i crash cool it will the hops settle out faster or does that matter

If fermentation is still active when you add the hop pellets (loose), they will float to the top from the rising CO2 bubbles.
I slowly rock the carboy a few times to submerge the pellets each day. When I'm ready to keg the beer, I cold crash for a few days and most all of the hop matter and yeast drop. The hop layer is "fluffy" and not too dense so moving the carboy will stir it up.
Rack with the intake as close to the surface as you can, dropping the siphon tube as the volume drops, and you won't disturb the hop layer much.

I bottle all my stuff, and have had issues getting hops to drop before after adding pellets loose. I also don't have an easy way to cold crash.

What doesn't work -
Putting a sanitized mesh bag around the intake of the autosiphon... it just gets plugged.

What does work -
Putting a sanitized fine mesh bag around the tube end (outflow) of the autosiphon and tying it in place. Use something to weight it down and hold the bag on the bottom of the bottling bucket. My last IPA, I ended up collecting about a half cup of hop matter that would have otherwise made it into my bottles. While not ideal (and opening up possible additional sources of contamination/oxidation, if you are dry hopping, your probably drinking it quickly anyway...

Not sure it's the best, but what I did most recently was to use a sanitized hop bag and pull it the day before crashing and bottling.

spiderwrangler wrote:
What does work -
Putting a sanitized fine mesh bag around the tube end (outflow) of the autosiphon and tying it in place. Use something to weight it down and hold the bag on the bottom of the bottling bucket. My last IPA, I ended up collecting about a half cup of hop matter that would have otherwise made it into my bottles. While not ideal (and opening up possible additional sources of contamination/oxidation, if you are dry hopping, your probably drinking it quickly anyway...

I do this same thing and have been doing it for about 2 years now on all my beers i dry hop. I just make sure I flush my kegs with Co2 really well before I transfer, this keeps oxygen pick up down. I have never had any problems and have medaled with multiple beers using this process. Crash cooling helps too. Cheers!