Dry hopping

What's the best way to dry hop? I'm brewing a black IPA and I'm curious as to the best way to do this?

Many ways to go about it, but one common way (and my method of choice) is to place the hops in the bottom of a fermenter that has been rinsed with sanitizer, and then rack your beer onto it after primary fermentation is complete. Dry hopping is one of the few reasons I will personally use secondary. Just note that you don't want to leave the beer on the dry hops for more than ~10 days or so (I never leave them longer than a week) if you are dry hopping at normal fermenting temperatures, or they will impart a vegetal taste (think wheat grass flavor, or the smell of grass clippings). You can leave the beer on the hops if you do it colder (like in your keg at serving temperatures), but that is something you would want to experiment with later.

Many people put their hops in bags, etc. I just let them swim free in the beer. It's pretty easy to rack off them for kegging or bottling afterwords.

Enjoy!

I only make one IPA but it has great reviews from some local professional brewers. I use two unique methods for hopping my IPAs. The first one is called First Wort Hopping or FWH. This involves adding all of the hops you were going to during the 60 minute (or 90 minute) boil point and instead add it to your brewpot as your sparging your wort. As far as I can tell there is no real science as to why this works so well but it adds a unique bitterness to your beer and detracts from mouth puckering astringency. The second method I use is to take the dry hops I use and dump them in the primary after the first 24-36 hours of primary fermentation. A local brewpub gave me the idea and it works great. The theory is that the mechanical forces from active fermentation will knock around your hops and give you the best efficiency in regards to extracting essential oils. I then keep my IPA in the primary for 4 weeks without transferring to a secondary, cold crash, gelatin, and keg/bottle.

Thanks guys! I think I will try both ways and determine which goes best! Prost!!