Not-so-n00b (who should know better) with a n00b question on dry hopping.

Hello all, been brewing about 10 years off and on and recently switched to all-grain. On Superbowl Sunday just about 2 weeks ago I brewed the Belgian Slut IPA (recipe found on HBT) and used a yeast starter. There was a ton of krausen and it actually blew the lid off the bucket at one point before I went to a blow-off hose.



I have 3 ounces of saphir hops to dry-hop it.
The issue is the beer is done fermenting (1.010) and I want to dry hop it, which I would have done in a secondary but now I see no point in even transferring to secondary.

There was a 1/4" thick layer of yeast floating on the surface of otherwise crystal clear beer. Regardless of whether I rack it to secondary or directly to the keg, I didn't want to rack through this layer and disturb the yeast since the beer was so clear.

I used a slotted spoon to "sink" that yeast layer and will give it a couple more days to clear. Because it was done fermenting and I wanted to clear it up again after disturbing that yeast, I crash-cooled it by putting it in the garage and in 8 hours it dropped from 68 to 58F and by now it's probably 50F.

Do you think I should just dump in the dry hopping hops now and leave it at the colder temp for clarification? Or should I bring it back to a more normal temp for a while for the dry hopping it and then later re-crash cool it to clarify? For dry hopping, I was planning on just dumping them in the beer, not using a bag or anything.

Is there anyone who feels I still should transfer this to the carboy for a while, and if so would I dry hop it in that?

I want this beer ready for the 24th, I'm having a party and I know it'll take 3-4 days to force carbonate and clear a little more in the keg.

Thoughts and opinions please! Forgive my dumb question, I haven't dry hopped anything in a while.

I'm no expert but I suspect that you could warm that beer up, dry hop it for a week and find that time and gravity will have you with clear beer again in a week anyway.

If you're going to dry-hop it and are worried about the trub, I would go ahead and rack to a secondary on top of the hops, let it sit for 7-10 days and then keg.

I don't keg and I put everything in a secondary at some point anyway, so that's my bias. Good luck, looks like a pretty healthy brew!

I wasn't so worried about trub, I know many on HBT don't even use a secondary. I usually do. I racked onto 2 oz of Saphir and 1 oz of Amarillo for dry hops.

Let me tell you, everything about this batch has been a clusterf&ck.
First, there was the sparge where I thought the liquid had all drained from the tun but I was a quart short, added another quart of sparge water just to find out there was a bunch of wort still in the hoses. I know, RDWHAHB.

Then, boil-off was CONSIDERABLY less than the last batch, resulting in a lower than expected OG and higher than expected volume into the primary. 5.75 Gal went into the primary despite a ****ty whirlpool and a full gallon of kettle loss when siphoning to the fermenter (I don't have a valve on this brewpot, getting a toptier with boilermakers soon). So I ended up with watered-down wort. Instead of 1.062 OG I hit 1.053 (with more volume into ferm despite losing more in the kettle than normal).

So half an hour ago I'm racking onto these incredible-smelling hops in my 5-gal carboy, and devoting all my attention to getting all the clear beer without being too stingy and getting yeast and trub. Don't I overflow the f&cking carboy and lose ~25% of my hops in the process... I had an extra ounce of Amarillo (@9.3%) left over from a last-minute recipe adjustment on brew day so I put a half-ounce of that into the carboy to hopefully make up whatever spilled over. Plan is to let it sit a week at 66F then rack to corny keg for force carbonation.

So, sage homebrewing commenters, aside from the obvious "don't rack more than will fit into a vessel", can you critique my process and my answers to problems?

Thanks for your answers so far.

I would have racked anyway. There is something that yeast does to prevents hop flavor from being absorbed into the beer when dry hopped. You want to get as much yeast out of your beer before you place those precious hops in there! I made the mistake of trying to dry hop in primary and the results were disappointing to say the least.

I find it weird that you'd have so much yeast on top if it's done fermenting. Normally all of the krausen and yeast fall to the bottom once fermenting is completed with ales.

earwig said:

I find it weird that you'd have so much yeast on top if it's done fermenting. Normally all of the krausen and yeast fall to the bottom once fermenting is completed with ales.

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Depends on the strain, and a lot of other factors. Ive had some fall immediately and some stay for weeks.

earwig said:

I find it weird that you'd have so much yeast on top if it's done fermenting. Normally all of the krausen and yeast fall to the bottom once fermenting is completed with ales.

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I was thinking the same thing.. sort of weird.

Also, you left off the best option - the one I ALWAYS do. Rack to keg, dry hop in the keg (in a nylon bag, tea ball if you use pellets, or nothing - your choice).

I use a nylon bag (because I use whole hops), I tie non-scented dental floss to the bag and pull it out through the lid. I can chill and carb at the same time it's dry hopping.

MaynardX said:

Depends on the strain, and a lot of other factors. Ive had some fall immediately and some stay for weeks.

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What ale yeast strains hang out on top after fermentation? I've experimented with so many yeasts and as long as fermentation was done and ready for bottling I've never had yeast on top; except for a couple floaties... he had a full 1/2 inch.

Well, it sounds like you have more experience than I do, but I would suggest that this fermentation being so aggressive it filled the headspace so completely and densely that in effect the yeast was able to solidify somewhat into sort of a shell on the surface. As soon as I disturbed it, it sank readily to the bottom, but I think it was just surface tension of this solid 1/4" layer on top that kept it up there. I know yeast usually drops to the bottom when it's done, but there is nothing magic that says it has to, at least not that it will disobey the laws of physics. To me it's like considering why the St. Louis arch, made of stainless steel, stays up in the air rather than falling down. Normally stainless steel wouldn't stay up in the sky like that, but with the right physical conditions things can stay up that otherwise we think should come down. When I was racking it down near the bottom, I could see no activity in the yeast cake when normally transferring I would see some faint remnant of activity there, so it was done, both in terms of final gravity and appearance. For the record it was WLP530 that I used - Abbey ale. I hope I'm not coming off as argumentative, don't mean to.

I'm always open to learning new stuff. I wasn't trying to be argumentative as well. I was only speaking from my experiences. So far with every fermentation the yeast fell to the bottom with everything else/the trub.