Getting more beer after dry hoping

[grico]

Ok, so i am going to be brewing an IPA this weekend, and i am planning on at least 4oz of dry hops. Last time i did this my 5 gallon batch turned into 3 gallons. Has anyone tried filtering their beer from secondary to get close to the 5 gallons brewed? If so, how did you do it?

I know some people have tied a hop bag to the end of their racking cane, but i have heard that clogs.

[bwarbiany]

Full leaf, or pellet? I usually use pellet for dry-hopping, and don't get obscene losses to hop material.

You also may want to calculate your recipe for 5.5 gallons to account for losses in the process (although obviously losing 2 gallons to hops is way too much).

[grico]

I do pellet as well. I just remember seeing a 1" ring above the turb ring, and that was with only 2oz of hops. However turb +2" of hops might mean less beer. I may try the 5.5g and try to get as much as i can into secondary.

[Brewfoo]

I also dry hop with hop pellets up to 6 oz in the secondary. I am starting to notice that I may just be using too much hop pellets for dry hopping without getting much more benefits. When I first started dry hopping, I thought it was the best thing since Pop Rocks. I would gradually increase the amount of hop pellets in the secondary carboy and found that 6 oz was about the most I could do or should do and still be able to rack my beer off the huge bed of hops.

A friend recommended using a fine nylon hop bag to cover the end of the racking cane which helped tremendously. I bought some silicon food grade rubber bands to hold the bag onto the cane from Bed Bath and Beyond(yes, I shop there with a disguise). The problem I still have is that the amount of naked dry hopping I do still clogs the tip of the racking cane even with the hop bag as a filter. I need to make a small wire cage to expand the hop bag at the racking cane tip. I was thinking of using some aluminum wiring coils for flower arrangement they sell at Michael's. Another friend recommended adding some marbles to the filter bag.

My last IPA with 6 oz of dry hop pellets in the secondary gave me lots of clogging issues and yielded just a bit more than 3 gallons. However, it was one of the best IPA's I've tasted recently and didn't mind the lower yield vs. quality booze. It was my friend Tommy's Pliny tribute beer and we drank it at the last Beer Signal at OOTP with Brad's IPA and it tasted very similar to each other. He only used 3 oz of dry hops.

[StarRaptor]

My last IPA with 6 oz of dry hop pellets in the secondary gave me lots of clogging issues and yielded just a bit more than 3 gallons. However, it was one of the best IPA's I've tasted recently and didn't mind the lower yield vs. quality booze. It was my friend Tommy's Pliny tribute beer and we drank it at the last Beer Signal at OOTP with Brad's IPA and it tasted very similar to each other. He only used 3 oz of dry hops.

Tastes might have been similar but yours had more aroma

[brahn]

I put my dry hops (pellet) in a bag suspended with dental floss in the serving keg. The downside is little hop floaties in the beer (sometimes), but that hasn't bothered anyone that I know. I've noticed very little loss doing it this way.

One way to reduce your overall losses is to just do the dry hop in the primary, that way you don't have the losses from primary -> secondary plus the dry hop loss. There's really no benefit to moving the beer to another vessel.

Dry hop quantites just depends on what you're going for. There are great (double) IPA's with quite a range of dry hopping rates. These numbers are from Can You Brew It recipes, which generally come straight from the brewers themselves although I didn't listen to all of these podcasts myself.

9.5 oz / 5G is where you'd find Maharaja
6.75 oz / 5 G would be in Pliny territory
2.5 oz / 5 G is what's used in Union Jack
2 oz / 5 G is about what you'd find in Green Flash West Coast IPA or Ruination
1.5oz / 5 G is about what you'd find in Celebration or Lagunitas IPA

[nico soze]

i sterilize a hop bag put the pellets in there. you still need the nylon bag on the racking cane, but it's not nearly as bad. chad is opposed to this technique, he likes to watch the hops float around.

[lexuschris]

I usually put my dry hop pellets in a sterilzed nylon bag with a few glass marbles. Then I just plop them into the primary fermenter (bucket) and let them sit for 7-14 days.

On keggin day, its easy to retrieve the bag (which the tip-top still floats at the surface) and let it drain before I transfer to the keg.

I usually dryhop with 6-8 oz for my IPAs....
--LexusChris