Hello all,
Brewing novice here; been doing it for only about 6 months, so still working on figuring this whole thing out. My question is about using a filter after dry hopping, but first: a quick story.
I recently brewed a sour. It fermented in a 6-gallon glass carboy. After 1 week, I put frozen raspberries in my 5-gallon carboy and transferred half of my beer from the 6-gallon into the 5-gallon. I put frozen blueberries in the half that remained in the 6-gallon. Goal was to make half the batch a blueberry sour and half the batch a raspberry sour. Anyway, when it came time to bottle, I lined the inside of my bottling bucket with a nylon mesh bag that had been boiled and sanitized. After I finished transferring each brew separately into the bottling bucket, I just lifted out the mesh bag, removing all the seeds and fruit bits. I was pretty confident that there were no bits of stuff left in the bucket.
I'd like to brew a heavily-hopped IPA or DIPA next, and I'm wondering if that same method would work for filtering out the hop material left over in the carboy after dry-hopping? I've read it's better to have the dry hops freely floating rather than confined to a bag in the fermenter. Can I have the hops freely floating, then when it's time to bottle, transfer my beer from the fermenter into the the bottling bucket lined with the nylon bag, then just lift that out prior to bottling?
I've read lots of different opinions about ways to keep hop material from getting into the final product, but hadn't come across this method yet. Maybe I've just missed it, or maybe it's a bad idea for some reason.
Thanks!