Dry Hopping In Primary

Made an IPA on Black Friday with my son while the girls went out shopping. It's been fermenting for 17 days now at 62-64 degrees, and I'd like to dry hop with whole leaves in the primary (bucket), using a mesh bag for about 5 days before kegging. A few Qs:

- Any need to cold crash before dry hopping?
- Once I start dry hopping, should I move the fermenter to room temps?
- If dry hopping at room temps, should I take the temps back down before kegging?

TIA....

No need to cold crash before dry hopping. I almost always dry hop in primary. You can warm it a bit if you want to help your yeast work a bit more and maybe clean up or get 1 point better attenuation if there are any fermentables left, but it probably won't do anything noticeable. Once you've dry hopped for a few days, you can crash it to help clear your beer if you'd like or just go straight to packaging. I usually cold crash my lighter beers.

Nothing wrong with dryhopping in the primary, but a few things to consider:

1) You don't want to dryhop for more than 7-10 days. The hops start to add a bit of a grassy taste to the beer after that.

2) In my experience, a dryhopped beer has the nice, fresh dryhopped aroma for about 10-14 days before it starts to dissipate pretty rapidly. For that reason, I typically dryhop cold in the keg starting whenever I start to serve the beer instead of in the primary, as that dryhop aroma will fall off pretty rapidly. The downside of this method, of course, is I typically have a bit of hop dust in my beers for the first 4-5 days, but nothing that bothers me. One of these days I'm going to invest in a Randal/Hopback to solve that slight issue.

Good luck!

Popped the bucket lid today and verified FG. Poured the hydrometer sample into a glass, pretty damn tasty if I say so myself. Put an ounce of whole leaf Citra in a weighted muslin bag and tossed it in. Can't wait. But I will....

As a close-out to the post, I dry hopped in the primary for five days and then kegged. Still have a few gallons left, it turned out excellent and has been complimented by many of my craft beer and homebrewing friends.

The best compliment was from my craft beer loving SWMBO. Since my homebrew pipeline was empty at the time, I had a commercial keg of Sierra Nevada on tap in my kegerator. The day I kegged this batch, I pulled a sample with my thief and put it in a glass. I set the glass on the counter and went out in the garage to grab my autosiphon. When I came back the wife was holding the glass, and said "There's something wrong with the Sierra Nevada, it's flat".