Cold Side Process

traviswalken said:

I am trying to settle on a cold side process. There are lots of different schools of thought (cold crash length, dry hop temp, dry hop time, etc.), but please let me know if you see any problems with my approach:

-Pitch starter per mrmalty.com
-Ferment 14 days +/- (temp controlled 64-68F typically)
-Cold Crash 3 days
-Warm up to about 60F
-Dry Hop 3-5 days
-Cold Crash 2 days
-Transfer to keg
-Carbonate

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

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traviswalken said:

Thanks for the responses.

As Dsmith suggests, I cold crash to drop out some of the yeast before dry hopping. I think most people dry hop without the cold crash. The first cold crash is probably unneccesary...but it is very easy with a temp controlled freezer. I have heard that Firestone dry hops toward the end of fermentation...so they don't wory about some yeast in the beer during dry hopping.

I think I might try gelatin prior to dry hop next time. Seems like an inexpensive simple solution to clearing beer...although a week or two near freezing seems to work well.

I dry hopped in the keg on my last batch. I liked the hop aroma, but didn't like how long it took to clear. I was picking hop debris out of my teeth for about a week. I also don't like having to pull the bag out of the keg after a couple weeks. This is especially frustrating because I can't seem to get my kegs to seal if I do the dental floss trick. Therefore, I am pulling the bag out with bbq tongs. Hopefully I get good hop aroma without the bag in the serving keg. If not, I can always add it later.

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