I have a question related to dry hopping and secondary "fermentation". Last month I brewed up a big English style IPA. I started the fermentation on November 21st and it had an original gravity of 1.081. I was using wyeast 1968 and with it's poor attenuation capabilities, the expected final gravity was 1.023. It was rather high, but I though it would be ok to finish sweeter to balance the 75IBU this beer expected to finish with.
After a long and tedious fermentation, I ended up racking to secondary on December 12. At transfer, I visually inspected the beer. The yeast had dropped nicely. The krausen had settled as well. For all intensive purposes, the beer looked pretty quiet. For my sanity's benefit, I took a gravity ready and it ended up at 1.020 which I was very excited about. I took a decision and went along to transfer to secondary. If it was going to attenuate further, it wouldn't attenuate by more than a few more points. So I did the transfer and added the dry hops. After nearly a week in the secondary, this is what I saw in my fermentor.
http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l122/mithion/second_krausen.jpg
I just couldn't believe it, a second krausen. I'm not experienced with dry hopping so I was wondering if this is normal behavior when you dry hop? I'm kinda worried that I wasted the hops since with all this activity, a lot of the volatile chemicals would escape. Has anybody seen this before when dry hopping? By most accounts, I've heard the hops are suppose to gently settle down at the bottom after a couple days but I've got half sitting in the bottom and the other half sitting on top in a hop "cake".
After a long and tedious fermentation, I ended up racking to secondary on December 12. At transfer, I visually inspected the beer. The yeast had dropped nicely. The krausen had settled as well. For all intensive purposes, the beer looked pretty quiet. For my sanity's benefit, I took a gravity ready and it ended up at 1.020 which I was very excited about. I took a decision and went along to transfer to secondary. If it was going to attenuate further, it wouldn't attenuate by more than a few more points. So I did the transfer and added the dry hops. After nearly a week in the secondary, this is what I saw in my fermentor.
http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l122/mithion/second_krausen.jpg
I just couldn't believe it, a second krausen. I'm not experienced with dry hopping so I was wondering if this is normal behavior when you dry hop? I'm kinda worried that I wasted the hops since with all this activity, a lot of the volatile chemicals would escape. Has anybody seen this before when dry hopping? By most accounts, I've heard the hops are suppose to gently settle down at the bottom after a couple days but I've got half sitting in the bottom and the other half sitting on top in a hop "cake".