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So I brewed up 5gallons of a generic cream ale, and it turned out fairly bland. Drinkable but bland. Beer is cooled, and in a keg (carbonated). I am thinking I would like to try dry hopping while it is in this state to give it a bit of aroma/flavour.

Any one tried this before? Hopping a "ready" beer in a keg? Anything I should be aware of?

Cheers.

I do it all the time. I put my hops in a sanitized paint strainer bag and leave them in until the beer is gone

I always dry hop in the keg. I put my hops in an 8x8 nylon mesh bag and drop it in the keg. I've kept them in the keg for 4 months without any flavour issues.

I do the same. Except I attach flavourless wax-free dental floss to the bag and put a glass shot glass in with my hops. The string is to pull it once I like the flavour since the keg will seal with the dental floss sticking out. the shot glass is so that bag will sink when I first put it in. Don't know if that actually matters but I keep doin it out of habit.

I found if you keep the beer a long time with dry hops in the keg you can get grassy flavour. This is not usually an issue though!

Be prepared for a bit of foaming if you decide to bareback it and throw them right in. Lots of nucleation sites!

I like Mike's idea. Give 'er and pull the hops out after 3-4 days. Pressurize again quickly so you don't loose the volatiles ...but then, the dry hops do better if they are free. Scratch that. Throw in a whole lot of leaf hops and drink the keg as quickly as you can.

if the out tube blocks, blast CO2 down it. I have shortened dip tubes (1 1/2") and got away with using pellet hops free before, after letting them settle. I think leaf hops would do better free but I haven't tried it.

GuingesRock wrote:I like Mike's idea. Give 'er and pull the hops out after 3-4 days. Pressurize again quickly so you don't loose the volatiles ...but then, the dry hops do better if they are free. Scratch that. Throw in a whole lot of leaf hops and drink the keg as quickly as you can.

Sounds to me like Mike isn't actually opening the keg to remove the hops. Rather, he's yanking on the dental floss to pull the bag up above the beer line inside of the pressurized keg. Pretty clever approach!

what's the risk of that floss trick leading to wasted co2? It sounds like it would create a small gap in your gasket (especially over time if you're wearing it down by pulling on it).

I think I'll probably start doing this with the mesh bag and floss, but I think I'll tie it to the underside of the lid in a way that will lead to the hops being no longer in the beer after the keg is half gone anyway. Starting in January I'll be brewing double ipa after double ipa until I get one I like enough to put in an exchange.