Do I need to rack all the beer to a secondary?

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photobru

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Hi all, I'm brewing a keg for an event and want to keep some beer for myself, so I am shooting for 5.5 gallons in a 6.5 gal bucket and then just before dry hopping I plan to rack 1 gallon to a jug to be left longer before bottling. The remaining 4.5 gallons will be dry hopped and then kegged. My question is, will the 4.5 gallons be fine left in the bucket during the dry hop, or should I rack it to a 5 gallon carboy?

It's a bit of a time crunch and I want to be sure the beer has fully attenuated before bottling it, otherwise I'd just leave it all in the bucket the whole time.
 
Many folks who keg will simply transfer to the keg, and dry-hop it there using a stainless mesh ball. Then you gas it up whenever you want. In this scenario, the gallon on the side could also be bottled whenever you are sure about the attenuation.

Cheers,
 
I'd say it'd be fine to stay, but you do run a risk with the increased headspace.
Personally, I'd transfer it to the 5gal carboy and dry hop there.
 
Dry hop in the primary, crash cool, transfer to keg. I do this all the time and haven't had one cloudy beer.
 
No, I'm not worried about dry hopping in the primary, done it before, I just want to pull off a gallon to ferment longer while the rest goes to the keg. I think I'm going to let the rest stay in the bucket and skip the carboy.
 
No, I'm not worried about dry hopping in the primary, done it before, I just want to pull off a gallon to ferment longer while the rest goes to the keg. I think I'm going to let the rest stay in the bucket and skip the carboy.

I'm a little confused at what you mean by "pull off a gallon to ferment longer". Do you mean that you wish to to age it? Cold lager it?
 
I've got less than two weeks to ferment this beer, which I don't think will be an issue since I'm using s-04 and most of it is destined for a keg anyway, but I also want to bottle a gallon and I want to give that more time to fully attenuate and let the yeast clean up.
 
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