Timing: Dryhop & Cold Crash

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

EyePeeA

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2012
Messages
354
Reaction score
27
My krausen dropped completely at day 9 in the primary. It's presently day 11 and the beer temp. has been raised to 68 F; it's still a little hazy, but much clearer than it was a week ago. I am racking this beer to secondary and adding a substantial leaf dryhop for 8 days.

I was thinking of cold-crashing before racking to secondary and then adding the dryhops. As long as I bring the beer temp back into the mid to late 60s before adding the dryhops, would this be practice be better than cold-crashing after the dryhop is complete? I assume it will assist in helping to create a clearer beer, free of yeast sediment.
 
I am still learning myself as I have only brewed 5 batches so far ( 3 extract; 2 all grain), but I think it would be better to dry hop first. The way I understand it cold crashing will aid in settling all the sediment out of the beer. I would think cold crashing after dry hopping would help settle out any hop materials left behind from the dry hopping.
 
To me that would be a waste of time. Just no need really. Most of the yeast will drop in the secondary, within a few hours really. Just rack and then cold crash after the dry hop.
 
To me that would be a waste of time. Just no need really. Most of the yeast will drop in the secondary, within a few hours really. Just rack and then cold crash after the dry hop.

+1
No need to cold crash prior to secondary, just be sure the beer is at FG before going to secondary, rack, dry hop, cold crash and package it!
 
I get what you guys are saying, but say the primary has 1.5 inches of yeast cake without cold crashing a medium floc yeast. After the cold crash, it has say 2 inches even and the beer is completely clear.

Then, you rack it to secondary and transfer virtually no visible yeast cake. Wouldn't this allow the best clarity possible and avoid the dryhops being coated by yeast cells? It seems to me that racking off the cake, and then limiting formation of a new cake in the secondary, would offer better clarity and maximized dryhop aroma.

I see the benefit of cold crashing for purposes to drop the yeast, but I don't see a benefit in cold crashing leaf dryhops. They continue to float throughout the process and no particulate is sucked up anyway if you wrap a mesh bag around the auto siphon. You can't say the same for excess yeast cells, some of which can transfer to your bottles, fall to the bottom, and cloud up your beer if you don't pour carefully. This time, I wanted to avoid that 1-2 cm of yeast sediment I typically get on the bottom of my bottles.
 
That's fine. It's certainly something you can experiment with. I would be kegging anything I would dry hop, so its different. It's going to be hard to bottle condition anything without sediment. You need the yeast to carb. It will always be there. For example, a beer I had that spent 9 months in secondary was bottled and took 4 months to carb. There is still sediment. Maybe you could look into filtering if you want the sediment gone, but I don't know on that one.
 
There are benefits to both methods:

-Yeast tends to strip hop flavor compounds out of the beer when it flocculates. Cold crashing before dry hopping would minimize this effect.
-However, adding hops in the presence of yeast also results in desirable biotransformations of hop flavor compounds (e.g., breakdown of glycosides)

If you're doing multiple dry hop additions, I would do one before and one after cold crashing. If you're just doing one addition, I would dry hop after cold crashing.
 
Back
Top