mklein
New Member
I am fairly new to homebrewing (18 months and maybe 75 gallons) and I take every opportunity I can to talk with brewers at our local brew pubs. During one of these conversations, a brewer suggested that I might consider a long primary fermentation and skip the secondary all together. I had read a little on this recently and came here for more info. Found a ton of good advise and have decided to give it a try. (Thanks to Revvy in particular for posting so much good info!)
However, this leaves me with one question. Last night I brewed a low gravity IPA of sorts and am shooting for really big grapefruit and citrus hop aromas. I used the following hop schedule (5 gal batch):
0.83 oz of Centennial at 60 min
1.0 oz of Amarillo at 10 min
0.5 oz Citra at flameout
0.5 oz of Citra in primary
1.0 oz Citra (plus remaining 0.17 oz Centennial) for dry hopping (in about 10 days)
I used my plastic bucket fermenter this time around and plan to skip the secondary stage which is when I would usually dry hop. Does any of this change when only using a primary, and maybe more importantly, should I worry about opening the primary to add the hops? Just worried that it is a really big surface area to expose to new oxygen, etc. Bought a one inch stopper and thought about drilling an access hole in the lid for drawing samples and adding things, but was finishing in the dark and decided to wait until next time. Any thoughts on any of this? Am I overthinking this thing? Thanks for any help or experience folks are willing to offer.
However, this leaves me with one question. Last night I brewed a low gravity IPA of sorts and am shooting for really big grapefruit and citrus hop aromas. I used the following hop schedule (5 gal batch):
0.83 oz of Centennial at 60 min
1.0 oz of Amarillo at 10 min
0.5 oz Citra at flameout
0.5 oz of Citra in primary
1.0 oz Citra (plus remaining 0.17 oz Centennial) for dry hopping (in about 10 days)
I used my plastic bucket fermenter this time around and plan to skip the secondary stage which is when I would usually dry hop. Does any of this change when only using a primary, and maybe more importantly, should I worry about opening the primary to add the hops? Just worried that it is a really big surface area to expose to new oxygen, etc. Bought a one inch stopper and thought about drilling an access hole in the lid for drawing samples and adding things, but was finishing in the dark and decided to wait until next time. Any thoughts on any of this? Am I overthinking this thing? Thanks for any help or experience folks are willing to offer.