Dry Hopping

Dry hopping will add flavor and aroma to a beer.  It will not add any bitterness since hops have to be boiled to extract the bitterness.  If you are a hop head I would suggest trying out dry hopping.  I like to dry hop my IPA’s but you can try it with other beers.  There are a couple of ways of dry hopping.  You can simply add the hops right to the secondary or do what I do and add the hops into a muslin bag along with marbles.  The marbles will help sink the bag to the bottom.  I will boil the marbles and muslin bag in some water in a sauce pan for a few minutes to sanitize them.   I then add 1 or 2 ounces of hop pellets and the marbles and then tie the muslin bag in a knot and add to the beer.  I usually will let this sit for about two weeks and then bottle.  The reason I like the muslin bag is it seems to keep the hops in the bag when I transfer.  When I just added the hops to the secondary and transferred, a lot of hops were transferred also.  It also seems to take longer for the hops to settle to the bottom when they are loose.

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