Hop pellets vs flowers

[Cheshire-cheese]

I see there are personal preferences for one to the other. Pellets take up less room for storage and apparently keep their oils better. But, apart from preferences, when designing / following recipes, are the equivalent weight for weight?

[mysterio]

Usually you allow 20% less pellets for bittering as you get better utilisation with them, because they expose more surface area in the copper.

I like pellets for dry hopping when I can get fresh ones. They steal less beer.

[Cheshire-cheese]

Thanks for that, Mysterio. With pellets, do you need a finer mesh than your average hop strainer?

[mat69]

i think you could probably put the pellets in a muslin bag if your worried about them clogging up your strainer..(might affect utilisation though)

[mysterio]

Yeah a bag would work (never used one though)

Your regular copper strainer would get clogged for sure. A nice idea from Aleman is to use the 30x30 mesh from these chaps, two pieces should do:

http://www.inoxia.co.uk/rw/product/product.aspx?ID=137

I simply crimped it around my existing hop strainer, although you could probably design something a bit better, try a search for 'Hop Stopper'