Dry hopping in primary?

I'm brewing some such IPA and it calls for dry hopping and to be honest, I am thinking of doing a bit to some of my future batches. I like the hops aroma.

Anyway, the recipe calls for racking into a secondary and adding the hops to that. I'm not a fan of racking and have avoided a secondary thus far with good results but I also have never dry hopped.

So, secondary or not? Any problem with dry hopping in the primary?

I've dry hopped in primary without any issue. Well, other than what you would expect from using whole hops. Put them into a hop sack and you'll be fine. If you're going to use pellet hops, I wouldn't even worry about that.

I've also had solid results by dry hopping (again, in a nylon hop sack) in keg. I simply add the bag o hops to the keg right before it goes into the brew fridge to be chilled and carbonated. Dry hop addition lasts for the entire keg.

Thanks Mr Golddiggie. I'll try both.

That's going to be the best way to determine which way you like best. I've found that if you dry hop at room temp, it fades before too long. If you dry hop in keg, however, it lasts as long as the keg does (do it chilled). Mainly because the hops flavors/aromas are being extracted while it's also carbonating. Then you still have the hops in there slowly giving up their greatness while you drink the brew (or pour pints).

Just make sure fermentation is over when you add the hops or the CO2 produced will carry away part of your aroma.

I dry hopped my Kolsch in my primary. i just put them in a hop bag and tied a weight to it so that the bag didn't just float on top of the water. I let it sit for 3-4 days before bottling, and you can definitely taste the hop aroma, but no aftertaste! (the biggest negative to me fore IPAs)

Thanks again. Good info, especially that about hops in the keg.

Since it had been in the primary for 2 1/2 weeks, I went ahead and racked into the keg with 2oz cascade and 2oz galena (sp?). Topped of with a bit of CO2 to minimize oxidation and now it sits for a few weeks or until I can't stand it any longer.

You should purge the headspace with CO2 as you would normally (for kegging). Once you add the hops, I'd also make sure it was chilled, or placed into the brew fridge/kegorator/keezer.

I haven't used a secondary for quite a few years, and I've never encountered any issues by not doing so (actually save a lot of hassle). I just dry-hop in the primary AFTER fermentation completes. Since I've just started kegging, I will probably start dry-hopping in the keg instead of the primary and see if that makes a difference (thinking it might be a small improvement, hopping step closer in time to the drinking step in the process).