Racking out Hops

[Bill Lawrence]

I guess I really ought to know how to do this but I rarely make hoppy beer so I don't get much practice. Anyway, I made a Dogfish 60 clone which I dry hopped with 1 1/2 ounces of pellet hops, just thrown into the secondary. I need to rack this into a cornie and I would really like to avoid having the little bits of hop between my teeth when drinking the beer. I usually just use the little cap on the end of my racking cane but last time I did this (many, many moons ago) I still got some hop material in the final keg. Anybody out there have a nifty way of getting around this problem? You would think that I would have come up with a solution before chucking the hops in but that would take all the suspense out of it.

[chris mewhinney]

Hey Bill. Like you, I don't do hops...but, you could cut out a small piece of a hop sock and affix it to the end of the racking cane. Better yet, a small chunk of fine steel wool wrapped around the end of the cane should do it. I use steel wool in front of the valve in my kettle and get very little or no "foriegn matter" in my fermenters. If you try one of these ideas and it works, great. If it doesn't work, it was Donnie's idea...

[Brewboy]

Bill, just get some nylon stocking material and put it over your racking cane intake tying it in place or use a zip tie. I'd avoid anything other than plastic, nylon, or stainless steel.

Just pick up a pair of knee highs and sanatize. They're fine enough to filter out hop pellet bits.

[Thors Brother]

If this post is not too late, you can drop the temperature to 55 degrees and all the hops should fall to the bottom of the carbouy in about 2-3 days. This will only work with pellet hops and not whole leaf hops. It keeps the hops in the bottom and I never pull over hops into the keg. I really like the hop sock around the end of the racking cane idea also.

[Bill Lawrence]

You are exactly correct Thor. I didn't get around to looking at the responses to my question and frankly I panicked since I had a tap open and Leroy was coming over the next day. What I ended up doing is just crashing the temperature to around 35F or so then just racked it off and carbonated. What little particulate matter that came through I drank in the first pint or so and now the beer looks good. Thor was correct, it all fell out due to the cold I suppose.