dry hopping question

[chuckster66]

I am making a 10 gallon, medium heavy IPA, hopped with summit, columbus, citra, simcoe and cascade hops, and want to dry hop this batch, but the hops I want, Simco and Citra are not out there, so I am thinking of using Chinook and either Glacier or Perle. Anyone ever played with those? I don't want anything to clash. The chinook should give me the spice and citrus finish I want, but I'm thinking the Glacier would give me the little extra aroma, not just citrus, for the complexity I'm going for. Any thoughts or advise? This will be my first time dry hopping.

 

[dcp27]

i would use the other hops already in this over glacier or perle. glacier might be ok, but its fairly mild, & i don't think perle would go well with the others.

fyi, if you search the interwebs you should definitely be able to find simcoe, maybe citra too (or sub galaxy which is like its NZ cousin)

 

[chuckster66]

I was able to find citra and simcoe!! HOORAY!! I looked at first in a couple places referred to me by a buddy, but found them in some online sites.

 

[chuckster66]

so this being my first time dry hopping, is there anything I need to know about the process. I wonder about the secondary transfer into clean buckets for the dry hop addition, if I need to transfer some of the yeast cake with it. I will be bottling these beers, and don't want to have carb. issues.

 

[Garyr2973]

I just finished my zombie dust clone. I dry hopped for the first time but read every possible post on the subject. My process was to just dry hop in the primary. I let primary fermentation go for 2 weeks, put 3 oz. of Citra in a Muslin bag then into a paint strainer bag you can get from Home Depot or lowes. Both the bags were sanitized first. Don't forget that hops will float (even pellet which is what I used) so I took a stainless coupling, sanitized it and tied it (with sanitized string) and dropped it in the primary bucket. I used a spray bottle of sanitizer and soaked the edge of the bucket and my hands before opening it. After that I left it for 10 days, removed and kegged the beer as normal. I have to say that this beer is the best I've made so I must have done something g right!

 

[dcp27]

so this being my first time dry hopping, is there anything I need to know about the process. I wonder about the secondary transfer into clean buckets for the dry hop addition, if I need to transfer some of the yeast cake with it. I will be bottling these beers, and don't want to have carb. issues.

theres no need to transfer to secondary just to dry hop & you definitely don't need to transfer any cake along if you do secondary as theres plenty of yeast left in suspension. you can dry hop in your primary as long as you allow fermentation to complete - and preferably at least a few more days to allow yeast to settle out. the hops are fine to just toss in there as well. sometimes they settle out, sometimes they dont, just start your rack to your bottling bucket in between lowering along the way and you shouldn't suck up much material. also, as this is your first time, be aware that dry hopping creates lots of nucleation sites, so you'll renew some bubbling but it is just CO2 escaping. as for time, some people swear by 3 days, others prefer longer like 10 days, its really up to you - and if life gets away from you and it goes longer don't worry about it, i've gone a month without grassy flavors. good luck!