Pliny the Elder Clone, quick question on dry hopping

[TheWeeb]

I brewed the partial mash Pliny clone from Austin; hit the OG dead on, just over two weeks primary the krausen had fallen and I hit 1.016; a bit higher than the kit's estimate of 1.012 but no worries. The trub/yeast cake was huge!

I racked it to the secondary on top of the half a pound of hops and it became active again. Airlock, and this thick layer of green krausen bubbling away.

It has been 10 days, which is the recommended dry hop time, but as you can see from this picture it still looks like it is working. I know, I need to take some gravity readings; I just want to disturb it as little as possible. I would rather wait for it to settle down.

I am going out of town, is it OK to leave this for another couple of weeks? Any problems with dry-hopping that long?

Thank you!

 

[android]

supposedly you can get more of a 'vegetal/grassy' flavor from the dry hops if you leave it too long, but i wouldn't sweat it too much, i'd at least wait until they settle down to the bottom on their own.

 

[dirty_martini]

how long are you leaving for? i find that any more than 2 weeks dry hop time and you get really vegetal grassy and "green" flavors instead of the hop flavors you are used to. If you are taking an extended leave, I would transfer off the hops, and then go for a second dosing of dry hops. After all, Elder is dry hopped twice and Younger four different times.

 

[Oldsock]

It probably isn't actually fermenting. The hops just give spots for CO2 bubbles to form. Take a gravity reading, at most it probably dropped a couple points. You should be fine to bottle at this point.

On a side note, I like to use whole hops for dry hopping because they reduce the amount of grassy/vegetal flavor the dry hops contribute. The pellet hops are broken up so there is more exposure to the internals of the leaf structure where the chlorophyll is (which is what gives you the grassiness). I often leave beers on hops in the keg for a couple months without issue (although the lower temps probably also help as well).