I'm a first time brewer and wondering how to use pellet hops. Should they be placed in a muslin bag and removed after the boil or should they just be dumped into the wort and left during fermentation? Or does the type of beer determine which way to do it?

I use pellet just as I do whole hops. I place them directly into the boiling wort.

If some make it into the fermenter that is not really a problem; they'll just settle out along with the trub and eventually the yeast.

It is generally recommended that you use about 10% less pellet hops than whole hops or hop plugs.

Pellet hops can be use in any beer style.

I often use pellet hops. However, if I am going to do any dry hopping I generally use whole hops. This is more of a personal preference. Whole hops can be added directly into the beer during dry hopping whereas pellet hops really should be placed in a muslin bag when doing so otherwise you can end up with green "floaters" in your beer which can be a bit disconcerting for the uninitiated.

Although I often dry hop with whole hops I generally use a muslin bag with some sanitized marbles for weight.

At any rate, I hope this answers your questions or at least some of them.

- Scott

I seem to recall during a previous discussion that it was noted that the water sometimes became discolored from dyes extracted from the nylons when they were sanitized in boiling water.

This really...bothers me. I don't believe I could bring myself to use nylons in this way if this is indeed the case.

Admittedly there is a substantial price difference between nylons and muslin bags. However, I don't really believe it is all that big a deal since I reuse my muslin bags. After the beer is transferred or consumed off of the dry hops I simply toss the hops and then turn the bag inside out and rinse the snot out of it. I then generally place the bag on top of a bottle and let it air dry. Then when a load of clothes is placed in the washing machine I give the bag a good brushing off to remove any hop residue and throw the bag in with the load of clothes.

This seems to work pretty well. Of course, I've never tried this with hop pellets so I'd don't know how well the hops will rinse off etc. I suspect this shouldn't be a problem but....

- Scott

Perhaps I have it wrong about using nylons to hold hops.

However, I did a bit of looking and finally found the posting I was referring. There is a posting from GuitarLord (http://brewersroundtable.com/dry-hopping-with-nylon-stocking-t841.html?hilit=dry%20hopping%20nylon#p36511) which suggests that nylons can contribute some color to the beer. I don't know if he was talking about the nude colored nylons or not though.

Oh well...something to consider.

- Scott

I was referring to darker colorered, or black stockings. I've never used nude stockings as hops bags (I've since quit using hops bags altogether) so I would think that Wild would know better than I about those.