wittmania

Recipes 

Guys, I brewed an IPA (Yooper's DFH 60 Minute clone, AG) for the first time eight days ago and I would love to hear some opinions on two different questions:

1. The recipe calls for 10 days in the primary and then another ten in a secondary for dry hopping. Like many around here, lately I've been using a long primary rather than a secondary. Should I give this a long primary (30 days?) and then rack to a secondary for 10 days of dry hopping? 30 days in primary and then dry hop in the primary? Or, follow the 10 day/10 day directions?

2. I've read that you should drink an IPA fairly young b/c the hop flavors can break down over time. I've also read that some guys don't like using kegs because if you have to release pressure you can lose a lot of the hoppy aromas from your beer. So, I'm thinking about pulling out my old bottles and bottle conditioning this batch so that it's split up into 48~ sealed containers to preserve the taste and aroma better. Would that be preferable to kegging as far as flavor/aroma are concerned? I don't really mind the extra work.

Thoughts?

Yooper

Recipes 

I've been doing a two week primary, until the beer is clear, and then dryhopping right in the primary for 5-7 days. I keg it then.

I haven't noticed any flavor/aroma loss in kegging- in fact I prefer it over bottling. I drink that beer fresh, as soon as it's carbed up and it has plenty of hoppy goodness.

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Broken Leg Brewery
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SteveM

Recipes 

I usually do three or four weeks in the primary and right to bottles. If I'm dry-hopping, I'll use a hops bag (for whole hops) or just throw pellet hops right into the wort.

I've found that IPAs are much less dramatically hoppy after maybe three months, but it's rare that they last that long, and they don't go bad in any sense, they just mellow a bit.

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Black Diamond Brewery

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