Dry hopping in primary or secondary?

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ToastedPenguin

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I plan on dry hoping an upcoming IPA and had planned to dry hop it in the secondary but recently watched a view video's where the dry hopping was done in the primary. Since a primary can range from 3-5-7 or even 10 days I would suspect it would be difficult to know when to maximize the hops exposure to the wort without leaving the wort on the yeast cake to long.

I will probably stick with secondary dry hopping but wanted to see if anyone has dry hopped in the primary, what their reasoning and experience has been by doing so and when they introduced the hops.
 
In a homebrew environment, in practice, you can't really leave it on the cake too long. People on here have reported 3+ months of primary without any negative effects. All of my primaries last for at least 3 weeks, with 4 being the norm. Needing to rack beer off a yeast cake is a holdover from darker times of homebrewing in the 80s and 90s with poor quality yeast.

I dry hop in primary, but only after 2 weeks have passed, or fermentation stops, whichever comes later.

During fermentation, the CO2 will drive off aroma, so you wouldn't want to add them at the beginning of fermentation.
 
I usually dry hop in the secondary, just so I can be sure the lees are not interfering with that hoppy goodness. However, you can certainly dry hop in the primary. Just time your hop addition to 7-10 days before racking to a secondary or bottling (i.e., in general, that's about as long as you want dry hops in there). I have a Union Jack IPA clone in the primary now. The recipe calls for two dry hop additions, so I'm going to add the first round to the primary, let it go for three days, then rack to a secondary for the second round. I usually add the hops when there is no airlock activity, but I've heard good reasoning for dry hopping earlier, when there is still activity.
 
I have dry hopped in primary many times and personally feel like the beers have the hop aroma I was shooting for. I put the hops in the day the krausen falls and leave them in for 5-7 days for a lower abv beer and up to 14 days for a higher abv beer.

Eric
 
Just the kind of info I was looking for. I'm trying to mimic a DFH 60 minute, and I'm going to dry hop at the end of the 3rd week of my 4 week primary. I may do it later, try it in secondary, and see if I can tell any difference.
 
my house pale 1.050 always hits FG in 3 days, this is when I dry hop. after 4 more days I crash cool it for 2 or 3 days. then fill 2 cornies. I would only move to secondary to dry hop if I wanted to re use the yeast cake. but thats just me.
 
I usually primary for 3 weeks, dry hop at room temp for 1 week,crash cool(~3 days), and then rack to the cornie. This process hasn't done me wrong yet.
 
I dry hop in the primary and have taken on the theory that putting the hops in with 1 plato or less to go in the fermentation.

For example the pale I have going now is going like this

6 days of fermentation
start dry hop with a 1.015 gravity
raise temp to do a diacetyl rest while dry hopping
day 13, gravity at 1.012 and start crash cool

the couple points of gravity left help to produce small amounts of co2 to drive off the oxygen introduced with the dry hops.

with this process I can be drinking a nice fresh hoppy beer in 16-18 days
 
Just the thread I was searching for! Thanks guys!
I'm still just doing 1 gal batches, so with racking I lose a beer. (can get up to 8 beers from a well flocculated 1 gal batch without racking)
I'll be just tossing in the dry hops after primary finishes and forget about racking.
 
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