How and when to Dry hop

[Eric89]

Brewing is still pretty new to me, this my second batch and it has to be dry hopped . I have the wort fermenting in the primary , it's been 3 days . From what I have gathers I should rack to the secondary and put the hop pellets in a muslin bag for roughly 2 weeks as well ?, (once fermentation is nearly completed )
After all that prime and bottle. Like normal?

 

[Dunerunner]

Or you can just wait for activity at the airlock to nearly cease, add the dry hops and allow it to sit for two weeks, then rack to your bottling bucket, skipping racking to a secondary vessel.

 

[lawty1023]

I just dry hopped for the first time on my most recient batch and though I have never tried just adding it to the primary, I recommend racking to secondary for a nice clean beer.

 

[bobbrews]

I've done both with "clean" results. As long as you let time and gravity do it's thing, you should be okay. Just try to avoid agitating the trub.

Pellets don't need to be bagged really... they will all sink in like 6-8 days. I assume you're brewing an APA/IPA? If so, you can wait another 2 weeks, rack to secondary and dryhop for another week or two.... or you can keep it solely in the primary for about 20 days, add your dryhops, and wait another 10 days before bottling.

 

[chalkdust41485]

Depending on your fermentation situation, you should have no problem dry hopping in the primary. I have just dumped the hops straight into the wort.
I'd think about using some sort of bag if I was to dry hop with a large amount of (pellet) hops. That is just to contain the amount of hop debris that would be floating around that I'd inadvertently siphon while siphoning into the bottling bucket. But with a small amount (1-2 oz) I'd just through them in.
As far as the secondary suggestion, I'd only recommend using the secondary as a dry hopping vessel if you plan on reusing the yeast from the primary. Since your new, I'd assume that your not, in which case, it's perfectly fine to dry hop in your primary.
While I have used the secondary to make a "nice clean beer", I have now just resorted to a cold crash to clear the beer. For me a cold crash of a couple days is equivalent to a secondary of several weeks to achieve the same clarity...