Whole Hops: The Saga Continues

The Belgian American IPA at 5 weeks has settled quite a bit. The pressure lock still pushes up a bubble every minute or so, but fermentation has slowed to the marathon pace. The fresh hops have fallen to the floor of the carboy in autumn foliage snow-globe fashion, and we're hoping to extract the beer without much trouble from that group.

A few brainstormed ideas on keeping the hop leaves and buds out of the keg, after siphoning out most of the beer:

Create a screen or cheesecloth filter around the end of the racking tube to keep hops out of siphon hose.

Decant carboy contents into 5 gal steel pot and create a French press like device to press the hops to the bottom and pour the liquid into the keg.

Pour the last sludgy bit out of the carboy and through a fine pasta strainer and into the keg.

We may end up using all three of these ideas, in series, before getting all the beer into the keg for tapping. Looks like we're pushing fermentation to about 7 weeks, maybe 8, but housemates have been eyeing the batch hungrily and making comments like, "wow, that looks like it's about ready..."every couple of days, so we'll see.