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Help! Can you save my beer?
I'm afraid I've killed my beer. Here's what happened. I was getting ready to bottle. The beer was in the secondary (glass carboy). In the past, my routine has been to go directly from the carboy to the bottle using an auto-siphon. I've had no problems in the past. Two events changed my routine this time.
1. I dry hopped in the secondary. So, there was still a lot of loose hop crud at the surface.
2. A couple weeks back I broke my auto-siphon. I decided to replace it with a stainless steel racking cane and a carboy cap.
So, when I put the sugar slurry in the carboy, it seems to have stirred up a lot of hops. I waited a bit, then attempted to siphon. I could only get a very slow flow going, and what did flow was full of hops stuff. So I paused a bit to assess. When I tried again to siphon, I couldn't get any flow. I'm guessing that the hops are clogging up the tubes. Totally frustrated, I gave up. I put a cap back on the carboy and set it aside.
Is it still possible to save the beer? I assume that with the air lock on, the CO2 from the bottling sugar will just blow off. So can I let the beer sit a while longer, hoping to settle the hops, and then try again? My thoughts are next time to rack to a bottling bucket, then add more sugar and bottle. Or is my beer dead?
Your beer is fine. It will have a slightly higher alcohol content than you originaly calculated. You are correct that the priming solution will create enough CO2 to purge the air out of the carboy. If you were kegging I'd suggest to crash your beer which would freeze the trub on the bottom but that would kill your yeast. The only other options I know would be to wait for it to settle or to filter.
In the future it might be better to use a hop sock or tea ball to contain the hops. Good luck
if you put the beer in the fridge, it will help the hops settle to the bottom. fridge temp shouldn't kill the yeast, so you'll be fine to bottle. I'd let the beer stay for a couple days at fermenting temp before putting it in the fridge though, so it will have time to ferment out the priming sugar you already added. then put it in the fridge for a couple days, then try bottling again.
Wild is right, you're fine.
You could try racking your beer into a bottling bucket with a large diameter tube. Wash your hands, and just after you get the siphon going slip a rubber banded hop bag to the end of the tube.
Filter out the hops, let the bottling sugar ferment out & try again.
Ahhh, the adventures of a home brewer. 
Excellent replies. Thanks everyone. I suspected that my beer might still be OK. Hopefully I didn't contaminate it during my failed attempt at bottling. I was getting really flustered and stopped paying attention to my cleanliness :-) Unfortunately, I'm headed out for a week's vacation, so will have to figure this all out when I get back. Great suggestions from all of you.
My experience begs the question: when does one typically dry hop? I'm still new to the home brew. Is it better to do so in the primary? Does it depend on the beer? The dry hops in the carboy just seem to be a pain.
Folks usually dryhop in secondary or the keg. Getting a hop sock out of a carboy can be a pain. You can always try one of these:
i dont understand why you put your priming sugar in the carboy instead of combining it in you bottle bucket that was a big mistake.let it sit ,siphon into your bucket with pre-boiled chilled priming solution and bottle. and never pull that rookie maneuver again lol
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