Dry hop question: what would you do?

[jmo88]

Which should I bottle first? I have two beers in secondaries. One has been there two weeks, a mild heather ale. The other has been in there for a week but has been dry hopped all-the-while, a RyePA. So even though I want your advise on which to bottle first, this basically comes down to dry hopping. Would you bottle the heather and let the dry-hopped sit until you collect more empty bottles, at least another week? Or, would you bottle the Rye so as not to extract a grassy aroma from the dry-hopping? I am concerned about letting the heather sit too long and not having enough yeasts when it comes time to bottling. Ideally I'd like to bottle both, but I don't actually feel like buying bottles.

 

[WBC]

I keg or bottle no beer before it has fermented in the primary for 2 to 3 weeks. This gives the yeast a chance to clean up after themselves. I would never try to dry hop until then either because the CO2 will carry most of the aroma out with the CO2.

 

[BierMuncher]

You could let an ale sit in the primary for 3 months and there would still be sufficient yeast to carbonate your bottles.

Always bottle your longer rested beers. If your concerned about drawing off flavors from the dry hopping, just rack to a tertiary vessel and let the beer continue to age.

 

[cmgray]

It's not going to hurt either of them to sit around in the secondary for an extra week.

So I'd bottle whichever one you want to drink first.

Or you could just go get a couple cases of bottled beer, have a few friends over to assist you in emptying them so you can just bottle both batches.

 

[Tonedef131]

I have been finding that I like my dry hopped beers the best when they have been in contact with the hops for 5-7 days. So if it was me I would bottle the RPA now and start drinking that while it still has the fresh hop aroma. I don't think you will have dropped enough yeast to keep the heather mild from being able to bottle condition But if you are worried about it just buy a packet of dry lager yeast and dump that into the bottling bucket with the priming sugar, problem solved.