Sanitization practices when dry hopping in a muslin bag

Question

Sanitization practices when dry hopping in a muslin bag

Dale

2012年3月27日 07:31

I've had good results, have always done it the same way in recent years, but always question myself when I dry hop.

Weigh-out my pellet hops
Scrub my hands with soap an water
Drop a weight, a muslin bag and a length of dental floss into my pitcher of StarSan
Put my hands into the pitcher for a minute, then pick up the bag
Squeeze (hard) on the muslin bag to rid it of most of the StarSan
Open the damp bag, drop in the weight and hops
Tie the top of the bag closed with the dental floss
Pull the plug out of the carboy, drop the bag in (leaving the tail of the dental floss out, so I can retrieve the bag later)
Put the plug back in the carboy

Of course I do this when most of the sugars are gone already, the alchol level is up, and there's a lot of dissoved CO2. And I don't want to get into bag vs no bag discussion, but otherwise, from a sanitization perspective, are there other, possibly better, techniques? Do some folks not even soak the bag in sanitizer and get away with it?

Topic dry-hop starsan dry-hopping sanitation homebrew

Category Mac

suprchunk · Accepted Answer · 2012年3月27日 07:31

1

suprchunk answered at 2012年3月27日 07:31

I've done it for years without sanitizing any of the bags and have yet to have a problem. If I were to go the route you are taking I would have stopped using the bags a long time ago.

LastBoltonBrewery · Accepted Answer · 2012年3月20日 14:45

The easiest way is to take the bag out of the equation. You will get more surface area when the hops are not confined to a bag. I know that cleaning a carboy from hop sludge can be a pain.

I did dry hopping for a couple of years in bags and have recently started to throw the hops in the carboy. I feel that I get a much better dry hop character in a shorter amount of time.

Just some food for thought.

Cheers!

brewchez · Accepted Answer · 2012年3月17日 11:35

Thats how I do it and I've never had a problem. In my own paranoia about the bag, I have moved to soaking a small nylon type bag and the fibers are non porous like muslin. I soak it overnight in a small dish of starsan and I am good to go in the morning.

Dental floss is a great trick too, just use the non-flavored/scented kind. I tend to dry hop in the keg so I tie the bag off to the longer dip tube.

mdma · Accepted Answer · 2012年3月17日 07:28

I usually just boil the hop bag and string for a couple of minutes. I've not used dental floss - I'm not sure that fresh minty taste is needed in the beer.

I use starsan for pretty much all my sanitation duties, but my reservations about using starsan here are that it may not penetrate deep into the material of the hop bag, but really this is probably unfounded. Also, like you say, the beer is fermented, so is quite inhospitable to acetobacter and other common contaminating microbes, but of course, not wild yeast, so some form of sanitation is necessary.

I think your method is fine. It obviously works, so unless you're looking for something quicker or easier, then there's no reason to change it.

Sanitization practices when dry hopping in a muslin bag

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