Hey guys, I’m fermenting a black ipa that is coming to the end of primmary and I don’t know what is worse: to risk oxygen contamination (I dont have CO2 available right now to rack the beer) or to DH directly to primary without separating the yeast. Any thoughts?
Don’t do a secondary! Dry hopping in primary is fine.
No one does what the old books say anymore. Just throw them in like they said right there.
I’ve dry hopped in the primary for years with no issues. What kind of fermenter are you using? If you have a large enough opening a bag or something to contain the dry hops can be helpful but not necessary.
I agree and have not used secondary in several years. As in anything that can introduce oxygen, be gentle and take care not to splash or otherwise agitate the beer.
I always fear if I don’t racking to secondary thing gonna be a mess, but I only had 2 bucket and I wanted more beer, so I read and I never put a beer for more than 2 months so autolyse would not be a problem so I don’t transfer to a secondary, and my beer is fine, better when I was transfer, but this happen because I learned more, and already did dry hop with during the fermentation and after the fermentation done both without a problem, the NEIPA I did this way was one the best NEIPA I tasted, better than a lot of comercial exemple.
I want to glean some additional information on DH in the primary which I have been doing for a while now.
My recent IPA was dry hopped in the primary (I burped off the yeast first from the bottom of the conical) and dry hopped with four ounces of pellets. My problem has always been with kegging after doing this with highly dry hopped beers. I keep clogging my inline screen with the hops when kegging the beer. I dry hop at about 66 degrees since I would have to start a “go-fund-me” page to pay for the electric bill to drop the temp in my walk-in cooler to 35 degrees (no glycol apparatus here). I try to burp as much of the hop residue as I can out of the dump port on the bottom of the conical but never get them all (I dry hop for about three days) I have tried back flushing the screen with beer from the keg (ith a short burst of CO2) to clear it but that really doesn’t help for very long and really stirs things up in the fermenter. I then hve to take the screen apart, clear out the hops, re-sanitize and re-purge it, then continue the kegging process. For beers with lower amounts of dry hops, I usually don’t have a problem, but kegging IPA’s has become a real PITA.
What are some of you doing to alleviate this problem? I have a racking cane screen that I could put on the racking arm of the fermenter but this would most likely also clog with hop residue and it really doesn’t fit tightly over the racking arm. I really don’t want to go back to racking to carboys, dry hopping there and kegging from them due to the danger of using glass and the potential for O2 pickup. Inquiring minds want to know. Do I let the hops stay in the beer longer and possiblly get a grassy note, or maybe agitate the conical to force more of the hops to drop to the bottom of the cone? I am running out of ideas.
I use hop bag or tea infusion ball, that one that float, after some time I remove the hops then bottle
I’m the odd man out it appears. Although I rarely use a secondary, that changes when I dry hop. I have found that I often don’t care for the interaction between hops and yeast, so I like to get the beer off the yeast before dry hopping.
Goose, have you tried dry hopping with whole cone hops and a bag?
Denny, can you elaborate? What kinds of flavors did you get that you suspect are from that interaction? I have a terrible palate sometimes and want to know what to look for. While I love shaving unnecessary time off a brew I don’t want to make crap beer for the sake of convenience either
i know this isn’t the thread for it.
but don’t you have problems with a lack of clarity if you don’t secondary?
what tricks or techniques do you use besides cold crashing?
Personally, I don’t care that much about clarity. I just want good beer. Don’t get me wrong, I Iove it when I pull a beautiful, clear pint but it’s not worth the effort and risk of transferring. Time is what gets me those pours. I don’t usually rush from fermenter to keg so that helps. Then it’s just time in the keg. Even brews with a lot of wheat or rye will eventually be very bright and clear.
Gelatin and time help
Several times I experienced what I perceived as increased levels of geraniol.
Nope. Just leave it in primary for what would have been the time of combined primary and sexondary.
Not in the primary. I would have to open the fermenter to add the cones or a bag which is what, I really don’t want to do for obvious reasons.
I am thinking I need to return to that method, Denny. The beer also clears better.
thanks for the replies. i should let it wait longer, but i always want to try gelatin again. i had a bad experience with gelatin once, not sure what went wrong with it but it basically left small gelatin particles in the bottom of every bottle.
This happen with some strain of yeast, low floculation and not enought gelatin