Dry Hop Aroma Retention/Loss During Transfer?

[Teesquar]

I brewed a 5-gallon extract/specialty grain of Modus Hoperandi this past Saturday and will be dry hopping directly into the primary @ around day 4 or 5 per the brewers at Ska (various threads via Google contain correspondence with them). They say let them sit for “a few days, then 1 more to be sure”.
Normally, I go to a secondary for a couple of weeks+ then onto the Corny for a cold crash and gelatin fining.

My question is will I be losing the aromatics of the dry hops during the transfer to the secondary then a subsequent transfer to the corny.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Yooper]

I brewed a 5-gallon extract/specialty grain of Modus Hoperandi this past Saturday and will be dry hopping directly into the primary @ around day 4 or 5 per the brewers at Ska (various threads via Google contain correspondence with them). They say let them sit for “a few days, then 1 more to be sure”.
Normally, I go to a secondary for a couple of weeks+ then onto the Corny for a cold crash and gelatin fining.

My question is will I be losing the aromatics of the dry hops during the transfer to the secondary then a subsequent transfer to the corny.

Thanks in advance!

Yes. You don't lose them during transfer, but you lose them with the time period.

Normally, dryhopping is done immediately before packaging so that the very last thing you do is dryhop for 5 days (or however many you do) and then package. That helps preserve the hops aroma and flavor.

By letting it sit for a couple of weeks, the dryhops would fade before even kegging. Then, if you gelatin it as well, the gelatin will "pull" out the hops oils also.

Aging a dryhopped beer isn't a good idea. If you want to put some age on this, and some gelatin, do all those things before dryhopping. Maybe dryhop in the keg as the very last thing you do.

 

[Teesquar]

Thanx Yoop.

I’m going to hold to their instructions of doing the DH in the primary. I’ll then move it directly to the Corny for a cold crash and let gravity do its thing. I like the use of a secondary under the guise of “it’s aging”. Actually, it’s keeping the beer away from my greedy impatience.

Oh well. Guess I’ll just have to brew another batch and try the DH in the Corny and compare.

 

[Yooper]

Just something to think about- my IPAs are generally in the keg by day 20 (often before), and I'm often drinking them by day 21-25. IPAs are great when fresh and in my experience are not a beer to age.

Right now I have an IIPA kegged, and it's dryhopping until tomorrow when I will stick it in the kegerator to carb up. I will be drinking it by this weekend. It's currently 15 days old. It finished fermenting on about day 9, it started to clear, and I dryhopped it on Saturday. I'm dryhopping in the keg this time, but sometimes I dryhop in the primary once the beer starts to clear and then keg it from there.

Once a beer is done, and is starting to clear, aging it will only diminish hops aroma and flavor and that's opposite of what most people want in an IPA/APA.

You can certainly make your beer the way you'd like, but I'm guessing that Ska wasn't thinking that you'd be aging the beer after dryhopping and that's why they gave you the directions they did.

 

[Teesquar]

My "greedy impatience" likes your thinking and has sent Mr. Aging on a vacation ... at least for this batch.