2 noob questions

[BigBrewHawk]

First, what is the benefit of adding your malt extract at the end of the boil versus boiling the whole way? Is it done to increase hop utilization? Does it affect any other attributes of the finished beer?

Also, I want to play with using only a primary fermentation on my next batch. I have used a secondary in all of my beers so far. My question is- is it possible to dry hop using only primary, or not so much? Thanks in advance! This community has always been really helpful for me!

 

[djfriesen]

Late malt addition helps prevent some of the darkening that boiling extract can cause and is also used to increase hop utilization, I believe.

You can certainly dry hop in primary. I do it every time. Wait for your fermentation to be done, say 2-3 weeks or constant SG reading for 3 days, and then drop in a hop bag, or even just throw the pellets in. I usually leave them in for 7-10 days and if I don't use a hopbag, I try to coldcrash to get everything to settle out nice and hard before bottling.

 

[Aschecte]

First, what is the benefit of adding your malt extract at the end of the boil versus boiling the whole way? Is it done to increase hop utilization? Does it affect any other attributes of the finished beer?

Also, I want to play with using only a primary fermentation on my next batch. I have used a secondary in all of my beers so far. My question is- is it possible to dry hop using only primary, or not so much? Thanks in advance! This community has always been really helpful for me!

To answer your first question... late malt additions are two fold #1 it increases your hop utilazation as you have said but it also effects the color of the finished beer by preventing any darkening due to caramelazation of the dme or lme as well as not producing any or little mallaird reaction. i personally only do it this way and find the results to be much better I add the majority at 15 minutes when I did extract brewing.

#2 is a bit more tricky as you need to be 100% sure primary fermentation is complete as if any co2 is still being produced by active fermentation it will carry away the hop aroma that you are looking to keep in the finished beer. I personally only reccomend secondary fermentors for two reasons the first being dry hopping the second being fruit. These two reccomendations are excluding lon term storage such as barleywines or lambics that should be racked due to the time needed to prevent autolysis. hope this helps.

 

[wailingguitar]

It actually is possible to dry hop at the time of yeast pitching. I have had to do this in a commercial setting where we carbed via spundig and it wasn't possible to open the tanks post ferment. I estimate that you need to increase the dry hop weight by about 10% to account for lost aromatics. That being said, I found the dry hop flavor to be more rounded and less "grassy" when doing it this way. It's a trade off.

 

[BigBrewHawk]

Fantastic. Thanks for the intel, guys. I am trying to brew an American Pale Ale with nice hop flavor, aroma and an actual "pale" color, so thats helpful! I was planning on adding an ounce of Cascades at knockout, but maybe i will wait that extra time and add it at pitching time. djfriesen, how do you cold crash before bottling?