For Primary-only Folks, When Do You Dry Hop?

After a bunch of reading on the forums, it appears like there are a large contingent of folks that don't bother with a secondary unless they are introducing additives or dry hopping. Given that you may normally use the primary-only method for, say, 4 weeks before bottling, what would be your typical schedule for dry hopping using a secondary?

For a hoppy APA I'm doing at the moment, I was thinking 2 weeks in the primary, then rack to secondary and dry hop for 2 weeks before bottling. Seem reasonable? Other recommendations? I'm certainly happy to wait patiently in either container to obtain a better tasting brew...

Cheers.

I dont have too much experience, but I would go 3 weeks primary, 1 week dryhop in secondary.

First things first - Welcome to HBT!

I generally only secondary if I am dry-hopping or using other additives (fruit, oak etc.).

I think two weeks primary and two weeks secondary is very reasonable. You could also leave it in the primary for the whole time adding the dry hop after two weeks.

Bopper359 said:

First things first - Welcome to HBT!

I generally only secondary if I am dry-hopping or using other additives (fruit, oak etc.).

I think two weeks primary and two weeks secondary is very reasonable.

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+1 exactly what I do

And yes, WELCOME TO HBT!

No matter where I dry hop (in the primary or in the carboy later), I leave the dryhops a week. So, I wait until about a week before bottling before adding the dryhops.

I just throw them in primary at 2 or 3 weeks. And leave them in for a week or two.

I dryhop in the keg, and pull them after a week or so. I used JB weld to attach a hook to the underside of one of my corny lids, and I hang the weighted dryhop bag from the hook. A week in the keg, pull the dry hops, and it's good to go.

I dryhop in the keg for 1 week (with a hop bag) and treat that as my secondary. after a week, remove the hop bag from the keg, and resume as if i just filled it.

buzzkill said:

I just throw them in primary at 2 or 3 weeks. And leave them in for a week or two.

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Seconded*.

* - At least, that's what I plan to do soon.

Another vote for 2-3 weeks, then one week dry hop.

Thanks a ton for all the (amazingly quick) responses... I'll give it a whirl with the 2 primary/2 secondary and then tweak in further recipes.

Cheers!

2-3 weeks used to be my MO as well, but I've listened to Tasty, the Lagunitas guys and a few others discussing dry hopping on the brewing network and a common method seems to emerge. They weight until primary fermentation is 80-90% complete, drain the yeast and then add their dry hops. Reasons this give for this are:
- Ongoing (though slow) fermentation drives off any oxygen introduced with the hops
- Interaction of hops with fermenting yeast produce different (and desirable) characteristics than if yeast is all flocced

Of course, if you're not in a conical, you can't drop the yeast, but what I propose meshes well with a 14 day primary only fermentation; you're probably hitting 80-90% of your fermentation at about 5-7 days and so would be dry hopping for about 7. If you want more dry hop (and you keg) you could follow Arkador's suggestion and do a 2nd dry hop in the keg.