Dry hop in primary??

OK, I'm all on board for the "who needs a secondary, unless you want to dry hop or add fruit etc" approach. After all, one less step is one less step, and anything that makes life easier is good by me.

But I have been wondering...why do you have to rack to secondary to dry hop? Is there a reason you can't just open up the primary after a couple weeks, add your hops, and seal it back up??

marcycaulkins said:

But I have been wondering...why do you have to rack to secondary to dry hop? Is there a reason you can't just open up the primary after a couple weeks, add your hops, and seal it back up??

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Works just fine... Cheers!!!

I just did this with a pale ale of mine and it came out great. It's only 1 airlock I have to clean as opposed to a carboy now.

I dry hop in the primary. Saves time and effort of cleaning more stuff. If I noticed a major difference I would use a secondary, but I don't so I just use the primary. With 3 young kids my time is golden, so the less I have to clean stuff and less time racking beer to a secondary the happier SWMBO is, resulting me ultimately brewing more beer in a given year.

Oh, yeah.....recently tapped an IPA that I primary dry hopped........it is fantastic!!!!!!

I did this last time and it worked ok. Just make sure to add the hops after the fermentation is complete, just as before, so the CO2 doesn't carry the aroma out the airlock!

I dry hop in primary or serving keg, only used a secondary once due to LHBS recommendation and then I gave the carboy away to someone so I'd not have to be reminded that I wasted the $$$.

My secondary is my keg. out of the primary into the keg with the dry hops in a hop bag. Works real nice like.

I usually dry hop my primary.
This last batch I just made a pale ale and used a stainless steel hop ball and dropped it right in the keg. Seems to work just fine as well.

I consider this the only way to do it.