Dry Hop.. In Primary or Transfer 2 Secondary

I would like to start attempting to dry hop some future batches, but I am confused on when and where to Dry Hop..

Many threads talk about leaving beer in Primary for 3+weeks (or longer), but does this mean to then Dry Hop in the primary on top of the yeast cake now at the bottom?

Should I tranfer to a secondary after week-3 (or longer) to dry hop?? If so how can I avoid possible issues with oxygen introduced with transferring??? I was thinking about getting some small CO2 cartrigages to put a "layer" of CO2 into the secondary prior to racking..

HELP I am a newb.. And would greatly appreciate some assistance on this topic..

I dry hop in the secondary (I transfer after 7 days) because I feel that I dont want to mess up my primary fermentation. But Im sure there are people who dry hop straight into the primary. My advice would be to dry hop before fermentation is over, that way the yeast are still producing CO2 and will push out the O2 that you introduce when dry hopping. Or you could just dry hop when you pitch your yeast, but since Ive never done that I cant tell you whether its good or bad.
-Jefe-

I do everything in the primary including the dry hops. I don't believe removing the beer from the yeast is a good idea until it's time to bottle.

I would add the dry hops to the primary when the yeast starts to floculate but it's still working. Like maybe 4-7 days into the fermentaion. If you have too much yeast in suspension they will absorb the oils from the hops. If you have no yeast working then you could get some oxidation from the hops. With the yeast still active they will scrub out any oxygen introduced with the dry hops.

I just did my first dry hopping in primary on 2 beers. I added them after 14 days for another 14 days. Then bottled. They both came out perfectly with a wonderfully hoppy nose.

And I prefer to use glass exclusively in brewing, very often leaving it sit untouched; I just don't let it sit on yeast for too long--I try to bottle 'when ready'. If it is a lager or a longer ferment, I will take off the yeast bed.

I also remove from yeast bed for dry hopping; hops into a carboy and siphon on top. Yes, racking will run risk of oxidizing the beer.

Revvy said:

I just did my first dry hopping in primary on 2 beers. I added them after 14 days for another 14 days. Then bottled. They both came out perfectly with a wonderfully hoppy nose.

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I would think 14 days was too long for it to sit with the hops. How much hops did you use in how big a batch. I've heard if you use 2 or more ounces in a 5 gallon batch for a long time (like 14 days) you can get a vegetal flavor. But my personal experience is limited.

maida7 said:

I would think 14 days was too long for it to sit with the hops. How much hops did you use in how big a batch. I've heard if you use 2 or more ounces in a 5 gallon batch for a long time (like 14 days) you can get a vegetal flavor. But my personal experience is limited.

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2 weeks is the standard for a lot of brewers, though more is NOT advised.

The Red had an ounce of iirc Cascade/5 gallon batch.
The Sma2h (Single Malt and TWO hop) Marris Otter/Cascade and Centennial IPA had 1/2 ounce of each/5 gallons.

Revvy said:

2 weeks is the standard for a lot of brewers, though more is NOT advised.

The Red had an ounce of iirc Cascade/5 gallon batch.
The Sma2h (Single Malt and TWO hop) Marris Otter/Cascade and Centennial IPA had 1/2 ounce of each/5 gallons.

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Right on, thanks!

Revvy (or anyone else with knowledge) when you added your hops to the primary I am asuming that the yeast cake(trub) was still sitting on the bottom.. Correct?? If not how can this be removed (as I thought the idea was to leave the beer on the cake to allow the yeast to clean itself up)??

hbhudy said:

Revvy (or anyone else with knowledge) when you added your hops to the primary I am asuming that the yeast cake(trub) was still sitting on the bottom.. Correct?? If not how can this be removed (as I thought the idea was to leave the beer on the cake to allow the yeast to clean itself up)??

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Yes, that's the point of long primary/no secondary, we leave our beers in primary in contact with the yeast for a month.

There's been a big shift in brewing consciousness in the last few years where many of us believe that yeast is a good thing, and besides just fermenting the beer, that they are fastidious creatures who go back and clean up any by products created by themselves during fermentation, which may lead to off flavors.

Rather than the yeast being the cause of off flavors, it is now looked at by many of us, that they will if left alone actually remove those off flavors, and make for clearer and cleaner tasting beers.

You'll find that a great many folks, maybe even the majority on here these days, leave their beers in primary for 3-4 weeks, skipping secondary. Many of us even dry hop in primary, and only rack to secondary if we are adding oak or fruit, or had fruit in the boil or primary and left lots of trub behind.

Even John Palmer talks about this in How To Bew;

How To Brew said:

Leaving an ale beer in the primary fermentor for a total of 2-3 weeks (instead of just the one week most canned kits recommend), will provide time for the conditioning reactions and improve the beer. This extra time will also let more sediment settle out before bottling, resulting in a clearer beer and easier pouring. And, three weeks in the primary fermentor is usually not enough time for off-flavors to occur.

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This is where the most up to date brewing wisdom and ideas can be found...In fact a lot of stuff has been started on here, and made it into byo or zymurgy or podcasts...in fact BYO DID a piece on no secondary/long primary, along with the BASIC BREWING PODCAST and even they said that there were no issues/harm with doing it and in some beers it did actually improve the flavor and clarity. And I believe that really WAS influenced by the discussion we have had for the last couple years on here.

I leave my beer for a month in primary and I have had judges describe my beer as extremely clear and "jewel like"....AND half the time I forget to add any moss.

Appearance ALWAYS scores high on my beers as well as taste. But there not one contest where a judge doesn't make a comment on the clarity of my beers.

That's precisely why I don't secondary....because my beers are much better than when I secondary.

After a month in primary your beer is crystal clear, very clean and crisp tasting. And when you rack to bottle you leave behind a really dense yeast/trub cake.

Believe me, after three years of doing the long primary/ no secondary I find no need to go back to doing it any other way. The quality of my beers has upped 10 ten fold.

The last batch I dry hopped in a secondary, I used 2oz of cascade pellets for a week. I think if I had gone any longer it may have been too much. It turned out great, and was a hop bonanza.
I guess it really depends on the hop variety/AA used when gauging how long you should let it sit. And also a simple matter of preference.

Revvy said:

There's been a big shift in brewing consciousness in the last few years where many of us believe that yeast is a good thing, and besides just fermenting the beer, that they are fastidious creatures who go back and clean up any by products created by themselves during fermentation, which may lead to off flavors.

Rather than the yeast being the cause of off flavors, it is now looked at by many of us, that they will if left alone actually remove those off flavors, and make for clearer and cleaner tasting beers.

You'll find that a great many folks, maybe even the majority on here these days, leave their beers in primary for 3-4 weeks, skipping secondary. Many of us even dry hop in primary, and only rack to secondary if we are adding oak or fruit, or had fruit in the boil or primary and left lots of trub behind.

Believe me, after three years of doing the long primary/ no secondary I find no need to go back to doing it any other way. The quality of my beers has upped 10 ten fold.

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Revvy, this is an excellent post and good timing for me, since I was trying to track down a problem with oxidation. I recently read the article in BYO you mention and had thought about not racking to a secondary with an upcoming beer. Based on what I had read prior to the BYO article and your post, I never would have thought that yeast would clean up after themselves or contribute to a cleaner beer. Thanks much for posting this. I will definitely skip the secondary next time.

I've been lurking for the past 6 months or so, but only recently created an account and had to comment on your post.

I used to transfer to secondary to dry hop, now after two weeks in the primary fermenter I open the lid, throw the hops in and wait another two weeks to bottle. When you leave the beer on the cake for 3-4 weeks you will notice how much clearer and crisper your beers are. One of the big keys to this process is to get a huge cold break after the boil, cool the beer down and let the protein solids and hop particles settle to the bottom. Siphon, don't pour, your beer off the the settled trub and leave it behind. I add .5 gallons to all of my recipes for this purpose.

Since I don't really secondary now, my fleet of glass carboys has now turned into a fleet of lagering/aging vessels. You will be amazed at how clear an ale you can produce if you leave it on primary for 2/3 weeks.

VERY STUPID QUESTION.....But..
Since I currently do not have a wort chiller I cool my wort in a quick ice bath and the proteins etc.. seem to settle, but I was concerned about about leaving fermentables behind (yes I am greedy). Is this something I should be concerned about if I siphon the wort into the primary??

hbhudy said:

VERY STUPID QUESTION.....But..
Since I currently do not have a wort chiller I cool my wort in a quick ice bath and the proteins etc.. seem to settle, but I was concerned about about leaving fermentables behind (yes I am greedy). Is this something I should be concerned about if I siphon the wort into the primary??

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No...your fermentables are in the liquid, NOT in the trub...None of us worry about that. There's plenty of sugars in your wort to get you happy when the yeast pee out all that alcohol.

JefeTheVol said:

I dry hop in the secondary (I transfer after 7 days) because I feel that I dont want to mess up my primary fermentation. But Im sure there are people who dry hop straight into the primary. My advice would be to dry hop before fermentation is over, that way the yeast are still producing CO2 and will push out the O2 that you introduce when dry hopping. Or you could just dry hop when you pitch your yeast, but since Ive never done that I cant tell you whether its good or bad.
-Jefe-

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Interestingly enough, I do the complete opposite! If I'm dryhopping, I often will dry hop about a week to 10 days before I bottle. I leave the brew in the fermenter for up to three weeks, and then add the dryhops. The reason is because I want fermentation to be completely done- any co2 expelled by fermentation will "blow off" the hops aroma and flavor gained by dryhopping.

If you dry hop during primary fermentation, you are just wasting hops. That's why no one does it until after fermentation is over.

JefeTheVol said:

I dry hop in the secondary (I transfer after 7 days) because I feel that I dont want to mess up my primary fermentation. But Im sure there are people who dry hop straight into the primary. My advice would be to dry hop before fermentation is over, that way the yeast are still producing CO2 and will push out the O2 that you introduce when dry hopping. Or you could just dry hop when you pitch your yeast, but since Ive never done that I cant tell you whether its good or bad.
-Jefe-

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I missed this earlier...if you dry hop when fermentation is still happening and co2 is still being produced, then all the nice hop aroma that you want in your beer, is getting lifted out of the airlock, and NOT staying in your beer.

I was planning on waiting to dry hop once my gravity is in my expected range, after about day+9.. and then leave everything in the primary until day 21 (3weeks{math wizzz})..
What about concerns with introducing oxygen??

hbhudy said:

I was planning on waiting to dry hop once my gravity is in my expected range, after about day+9.. and then leave everything in the primary until day 21 (3weeks{math wizzz})..
What about concerns with introducing oxygen??

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Worries about oxygen, like nearly everything else to worry about, are overrated, it takes a lot more oxygen than most things we do in the course of our brewing, including most of our mistakes, to acutally harm our beer.

Relax!

Perfect...
Thanks for the info..

hbhudy said:

I was planning on waiting to dry hop once my gravity is in my expected range, after about day+9.. and then leave everything in the primary until day 21 (3weeks{math wizzz})..
What about concerns with introducing oxygen??

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If it was my beer, I'd leave it in the primary until one week before bottling, then add the dryhops. If you add the dry hops at day 9 or so, and don't get around to bottling for a while, the beer could be on the dryhops longer than optimal. A week to 10 days should do it.

Another point about worrying about oxydation if dry hopping in primary after fermentations is complete. There will still be plenty of dissolved C02 in the beer, even after primary fermentation, that is still escaping to keep enought C02 on your beer and in your fermenter to prevent oxydation. I have tasted numerous samples of my beers before bottling and some of them had so much C02 in them that it gave the feeling of light carbonation.

Well, I figured I'd chime in a bit. I just got done reading Extreme Brewing by Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head brewery.

In that book, Vinne Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing chimed in about dry hopping and this is what he said, "At Russian River we dry hop at a rate of a pound to 2 pounds per 31 gallons...This is the equivalent of 1/4 to 1 oz of dry hops per gallon of homebrew. The amount of dry hops you add to the primary or secondary depends on how aromatic you want your beer to be. On average, I go with 1/2 oz per gallon. WHen we use an ounce per gallon, it is made via multiple dry hop additions over a four-week period."

Vinne Cilurzo on time of dryhopping, "I like to dry hop our standard Russian River IPA for 7 days, our Blind Pig IPA for ten days, our two Double IPAs (Pliny the Elder and HopFather) for twelve to fourteen days..."

Halfpint on Dry Hopping, I typically let my beer primary for 2-3 weeks depending on how lazy I am and then rack to secondary on 1-2 oz of hops. I then let it sit on the hops for some where around 10 days plus or minus a few days once again depending on how lazy I am and then it's straight to keg or bottle. I usually use a secondary for dry hopping because I wash a lot of my yeast and I don't want more junk in the cake. If you don't care about that, I don't see any problem with dry hopping in the primary. I have a recipe that Yoop helped me make a while back. It's a Cascade/NorthernBrewer Ipa that I let sit in the primary for 17 days. Since then, it's been sitting in the secondary on 1 oz of hops for around 4 days. I imagine I'll give it another week and then I'll keg. So far, it's turned out to be a wonderful beer (2 gravity tastings).

permo said:

Another point about worrying about oxydation if dry hopping in primary after fermentations is complete. There will still be plenty of dissolved C02 in the beer, even after primary fermentation, that is still escaping to keep enought C02 on your beer and in your fermenter to prevent oxydation. I have tasted numerous samples of my beers before bottling and some of them had so much C02 in them that it gave the feeling of light carbonation.

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You said it for me. I never worry about oxidation because regardless of what stage of the process your in, when racking the beer it will knock a lot of gas out of solution therefore purging the oxygen out of the vessel. Doesn't anyone wonder why their secondary air-lock is still floating even weeks after fermentation has finished?

I hope this helps,
J

One more question about dry hopping in the primary. Is it best to just dump them in or use a bag? and should it be weighted or just floating. I am making my first IPA tomorrow, and this will be my first time dry hopping, but I am already a big fan of the long primary. I will be using whole leaf hops.

if it's whole leaf then in a bag with a weight. pellets can go without the bag.

I never use a bag for my hopping. I feel that i get bettter bitterness and aroma utilization by letting the boys roam free in the carboy or pot.