Dry hopping in PRimary

Is there any brewing rule that says dry hopping in the primary is a bad thing? I've read plenty about leaving your beer on the yeast cake longer (3-4) weeks to complete fermentation and I buy that. My thinking is that if you could open the primary long enough to drop in dry hops, then you minimize oxygen exposure that is bound to happen transferring to a secondary. Your thoughts?

I haven't dry hopped in primary yet. Plenty of brewers do dry hop in primary.

Brian-d said:

Is there any brewing rule that says dry hopping in the primary is a bad thing? I've read plenty about leaving your beer on the yeast cake longer (3-4) weeks to complete fermentation and I buy that. My thinking is that if you could open the primary long enough to drop in dry hops, then you minimize oxygen exposure that is bound to happen transferring to a secondary. Your thoughts?

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Who says it is a bad thing? I've only heard the opposite. But I am a newbie, don't listen to me.

I've only dry hopped in primary. The two week old IPA I have in bottles told me yesterday that it works pretty damn good.

I do plan on doing some side by side comparisons with a few variables once I find a good APA recipe I feel like repeating, and this is definitely going to be one I test.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/dry-hopping-primary-260356/

Great minds and all that.

It is OK to do, but you won't get the best results and you will reduce your yeast's vitality if you plan on repitching it for another batch. Here's a great podcast that goes in depth about this technique:

http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/Brew-Strong/Brew-Strong-12-08-08-Dry-Hopping

unionrdr said:

Nothing wrong with it. I do it all the time. Just wait till you get a stable FG,since the brew should be settled out pretty good by then. The hop oils cling to the settling yeast being the reason I wait till FG.

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Isn't there also something about the CO2 carrying off some of that hop goodness if fermentation is still active?

I've had great results dry hopping in primary. I usually do it at day 9, when things look like they're on the glide slope for bottling by day 14. I've asked the same question repeatedly about racking to secondary/bright tank to dry hop and the brew strong episode is about the only thing that has been a good, valid reason. My caveat, I don't harvest/reuse yeast at my stage in brewing, and I don't own a carboy that would serve as a bright tank.

I dry hop plenty of beers in the primary. There are two distinct disadvantages though.

A. The hop resins will coat this yeast. This means there is less hop resin in the beer, meaning there is less hop flavor and aroma.

B. The hop resins will coat the yeast. Therefore the yeast will only be suitable to re-pitch into something hoppy, as some of that flavor will carry over.

Problem A, isn't much as an issue in beers that don't need a LOT of hop aroma. Dry-hopped blondes, bitters, and even pale ales work all do really well dry hopped in the primary. I'd recommend moving your IPAs and IIPAs to secondary before dry hopping.

I am not harvesting the yeast from my fermentor, I keep the dreggs of my starters for that.

I do dry hop in primary, my main focus to to put them in with 5-10 points left of gravity to ferment. The o2 that I introduce will be driven off and I can naturally carb the beer so once it is crash cool and I transfer and serve immediately for a nice and fresh APA/IPA

The downside is that some aroma will be driven off but you can counteract this by putting in more hops

I've only dry hopped in the primary once because all my secondaries were already in use and I wanted to try it out anyway. It may have been due to other factors but my beer did not turn out great so I doubt I will try it again...