Q: length of dry-hop and crash cool?

I have a quick question regarding dry-hopping:

I dry-hopped my IPA last week saturday and was planning on bottling this weekend. However, we're looking after our 2-year old nephew this weekend, and seriously doubt I'll have any time to get to the bottling.

That means it will be more than 7 days dry-hopping. How far out can you go before you start getting that grassy/vegetal smell or taste from dry-hopping too long?

I'm also thinking of making a makeshift crash-cooler. Since I dont have a fridge to crash-cool properly in, I'm going to try use a cooler stuffed with as much ice and ice-packs as I can and try drop the temps of the fermenter as far as possible. Hopefully this (and some gelatin addition) will help drop out some of the sediment and proteins. How long crash cool necessary?

Naked_Eskimo said:

How long crash cool necessary?

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Me think crash cool necessary 3 day going that way.


jk... i am going to have to crash cool exactly the same way as you since i dont have enough room in my fridge. Tomorrow, I am going to turn my swamp cooler into an iceberg holder and then bottle on sunday.

On how to do this, I've basically read that if you put your fermenter in there first, surrounding it with as much ice as possible, and then add enough water in the ice to make it a little sloshy, it should cool down drastically. Replace the ice as it is melting and you should have a cold crashed beer by bottling time.

Naked_Eskimo said:

That means it will be more than 7 days dry-hopping. How far out can you go before you start getting that grassy/vegetal smell or taste from dry-hopping too long?

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Hard to say an exact time as there's alot of variables (amount, temperature, type, etc). I've unintentionally done around 3 weeks with no problem and I've tasted a 6 week dry hop beer that didn't have any off-flavors either, so IMO you'll be fine.

IMO 7 days is not enough!
3+ weeks for me is the norm but like dcp27 says, it all depends on your situation!

good luck

I think herein lies the complication -- everyone has a different idea of just what is enough!

my APA was in secondary dry hopping for ~8 days and i didnt get any funny tastes.