Dry hopping in primary - question

[jsweet]

This is my first time dry hopping. I know it is recommended to rack into a secondary when dry hopping, I also know there are some who don't, and for a couple of different reasons (I'm ashamed to say the biggest one is I didn't have an appropriately-sized fermenter free) I decided to try just adding the hops to the primary; it had been 13 days. I am still a total n00b and still figuring out my own style/preferences, so I figured at the very worst it would be a worthwhile experiment. In the future I'll just be doing it in the secondary -- I think that is more my "style" (and besides, if I don't have a free fermenter at the right time, that just means I can tell my wife I just absolutely have to buy another carboy, right? Right? )

Another "style" thing I am still figuring out is how to go about transferring the wort into the primary. On this batch I ended up trying to decant it, but since the kettle had quite a bit of whole hops in it, I ended up getting a lot of hops in the primary anyway. I know people say that is just fine; I don't think I like it. But what's done is done.

So on to the problem at hand: The kettle hops kind of created a floating layer of hop fragments on top of the fermenting wort. When I dumped my dry hops in through a funnel, they made like a little pile on top of the floating hops that were already in there. I took my (sanitized) bottle wand (it was handy) and kinda stirred it around in there, and I did manage to break up the mound, but it still looks like most of the dry hops are just sorta sitting on top of the existing layer. I let it sit like that overnight, and it still looks the same.

I was thinking of picking the whole thing up and giving the carboy a vigorous shake. Sound like a good idea? JUST KIDDING!

My question is twofold: First, has anybody who has dry-hopped in the primary experienced this who could tell me if they still got an effective dry hop? And second, does anybody have any innovative suggestions for getting the dry hops to mix in a little better without aerating the crap out of the beer? It's in a glass carboy so.... access is limited.

I was sorta thinking about racking to a secondary now, but I picture doing that and I figure the dry hops will just sink into the trub. I suppose I could add the whole thing to the secondary, trub and all, and just wait another couple weeks for it to fully clear... but something about that just seems "wrong" to me.

I tasted a hydro sample before dry hopping and loved it... so I figure absolute worst case scenario, the dry hops don't work and I wasted a few bucks worth of good hops to get an awesome-tasting-but-not-quite-as-awesome-as-it-could-have-been IPA. Worse things have happened...

(Edit: Please don't make this a "ditch your glass carboy, that &*%! will cut your hand off yo -- buckets/Better Bottles FTW!" thread. I know all the arguments. For now, I use glass because a) I think it looks awesome, and b) glass just "feels cleaner" to me, probably because I am subconsciously fearing scratches. I freely admit that if I were being 100% rational I would switch to Better Bottles or some other non-glass alternative. I'm choosing not to be rational in this circumstance. If I break a carboy, or if I get sick of paying the extra $$$ on additional fermenters, I could see my mind changing really quick. But that ain't what this thread's about. Thanks!)

 

[Ell]

They'll sink eventually. It'll be fine as is.

 

[jsweet]

They'll sink eventually. It'll be fine as is.

I sure hope so. But the kettle hops never sank.... even after 13 days... I was originally planning on bottling this after another 7-10 days.

I suppose I'll just tell myself that though

 

[Yooper]

I don't recommend dryhopping for more than about 7-10 days. You can start to extract "grassy" or vegetal flavors from dryhops after that, especially if the temperature is above about 65-68 degrees.

What I like to do when I go to package the beer is to start the siphon in the middle of the fermenter- below the floating hops and above the trub level. As the beer lowers, I lower the racking cane, until the top and bottom layers meet. It works great!

 

[jsweet]

Sounds like a good suggestion, Yooper. I'll try and do that when I bottle it.

It's at about 62-63F right now. I don't use temp control, but the part of the basement I have it in is pretty stable... Low is about 58F, and that's if it's sub-freezing out; and high is not much more than where it is now. Those are seasonal variations, not day-to-day.

 

[bovinejony]

I recently dry-hopped Yooper's 60min IPA (thank you for the amazing recipe) for 10 days using a few ounces of hops. I hate the idea of racking to a secondary unless it is for bottling, so I simply popped open the primary (after boiling and cooling the straining-bags) and threw in a phew ounces of pellets. I have only used whole hops once but I made sure to strain them during my boil. If you use pellets during the dry-hopping you won't have to worry about the floaters as much. I just pulled out one of the bottles after 4 weeks of conditioning and I must say that the aroma is nothing less then bliss. If you can get the good effects of dry-hopping with the minimal effort then why fuss?

 

[jsweet]

I recently dry-hopped Yooper's 60min IPA (thank you for the amazing recipe)

Hahaha, same recipe I am doing in this one. I should have mentioned that already!

Turns out for all the hops I used, I had no choice of pellets vs. whole hops. The Warrior only came as pellets where I was getting them from, and the Amarillo and Simcoe only came as whole leaf. And the latter are the dry hops, so yeah...

If I'd strained it or decanted better, I wouldn't be worried, but... well, we'll see. Like I say, it tasted amazing even before the dry hopping, so the worst case scenario here is still pretty good.

 

[rycov]

mmm. simcoe dry hopping.

next time put the hops in a bag with some marbles so it will sink. make sure the bag is loose enough to let the hops move around and get soaked

 

[jsweet]

Okay, found a solution, but I hope it's not oxidizing my beer... the basement floor is ever so slightly uneven under the carboy, so I can kinda jiggle it back and forth without picking it up: every time I do, a few floating hops fall down into the beer.

It's so little agitation I normally wouldn't worry about it, but if I do it a couple times a day, maybe that could be a problem...?

 

[rycov]

there should be co2 in your head space now. seems like it should be fine, but you may want to wait for a second opinion.

 

[HomebrewMTB]

Okay, found a solution, but I hope it's not oxidizing my beer... the basement floor is ever so slightly uneven under the carboy, so I can kinda jiggle it back and forth without picking it up: every time I do, a few floating hops fall down into the beer.

It's so little agitation I normally wouldn't worry about it, but if I do it a couple times a day, maybe that could be a problem...?

For your original question, dry hopping in primary works just fine. As useless anecdotal evidence, I just brewed a Two Hearted clone (all Centennial hops). 3 weeks for fermentation, 1 week dry hop, and two days cold crash all in the same carboy. This past Friday was three weeks in the bottle and popped the first one on Sunday night after a couple days in the fridge. Hopolicious! :rockin:

Splash away if you need to knock the hops down and don't worry about oxidizing your beer. In a sealed carboy, all of the 02 has been displaced by CO2 anyway. It sounds really tasty so I really don't think you won't have to worry about any long term stability problems.

 

[jsweet]

Splash away if you need to knock the hops down and don't worry about oxidizing your beer. In a sealed carboy, all of the 02 has been displaced by CO2 anyway.

Good point, I didn't think about this. It had a nice healthy vigorous ferment, and the airlock is still bubbling every couple minutes (truth be told, my airlocks never stop bubbling... I think I get a good enough seal that just CO2 trickling out of solution is enough to ping the airlock once every minute or two) so it's still gotta be pretty packed with CO2. I will not worry

 

[jfowler1]

Another "style" thing I am still figuring out is how to go about transferring the wort into the primary. On this batch I ended up trying to decant it, but since the kettle had quite a bit of whole hops in it, I ended up getting a lot of hops in the primary anyway. I know people say that is just fine; I don't think I like it. But what's done is done.

My question is twofold: First, has anybody who has dry-hopped in the primary experienced this who could tell me if they still got an effective dry hop? And second, does anybody have any innovative suggestions for getting the dry hops to mix in a little better without aerating the crap out of the beer?

I see at least three questions here. A seperate issue could be your choice to use whole hops. Tradition is great, but the fact is, using whole hops over pellets is going to make this process I will offer more complicated. Consider pellets for freshness, ease of handling, and storability. Even Budweiser just caved and switched to pellets. With that demand out the window, you may see the availibilty of whole hops dwindling in the coming years.

On to your questions.

First - how to get the wort from kettle to primary without taking all of the break material and kettle hops along for the ride?

The solution is two steps. First, when you are about 20 minutes away from being done with chilling (I do not know if you use a sink full of ice/ IC / CFC - but it doesn't matter), take a large sanitized stainless spoon and give the wort a big stir. Big enough to generate a whirlpool. You have to then leave the kettle untouched for 20 minutes to allow the whirlpool to settle. That was step #1.

Step #2 is getting the now whirlpooled wort to your primary without disturbing the trub cone. Your answer is gravity, and the tools will depend on your set up. To back track a bit, before you allowed that 20 minutes for the trub and hops (pellets will cone - flowers will float) to whirlpool into a cone, you have to make sure your kettle is at a high enough point to feel the benefits of gravity. Fast-forward; your kettle is above the primary, and you have allowed the material 20 minutes to settle into a cone. Do not move the kettle. The quickest/easiest option here is a ported kettle, but from what I read, you do not have that option. A close second would be to siphon the wort down to the primary. A 1/2" sanitized auto-siphon works great here, and will not take much longer to drain your kettle than a 1/2" ball valve. Simply siphon from the side of the kettle, down to the primary, and you will be shocked how easy it is to leave the spent hops and trub behind in the kettle.

In summary, keeping sanitary, whirlpool during the tail end of chilling, allow the wort time to settle, and transfer the cooled wort via gravity with a siphon. Problem solved.

The dry-hop question will get you lots of opinions. I'll give you mine, but you should really evaluate everything you hear and read. From there, you will come to a system that works best for you.

For starters, I do not transfer my wort to a second vessel ("secondary") before bottling. The reason for this is because I have come to believe that each time you handle wort, you introduce oxygen. I believe that the contents of your carboy would benefit most by being left untouched for the duration of fermentation and conditioning. Rousing the yeast a bit is one thing, but transfering wort from vessel to vessel is a whole different ball game. Oxygen is the number one enemy of fermented beer. I simply don't understand why you would conciously introduce oxygen when you know how detrimental it is to a finished product. To each their own I suppose.

Since I do not practice a transfer between fermentation and conditioning, I dry hop right in my "primary" vessel. Dry hop strategy is a conversation all its own. Personally, (and the more people I discuss this with, the more valid I think this practice is) I feel the maximum contact time for a dry hop is 5 days. That allows enough time to extract the resin-ey hop oils from your hops, but not enough time to find the "grass-ey" characters that are associated with the 12-14 day dry hop schedules you may be used to. If you don't think 5 days is enough time to impart the hop aroma you are looking for, then you have a recipe problem. If you want more aroma in your next batch, use more hops. I just wouldn't budge on the 5 day rule.

From my experiences, 5 days is plenty of time for the "free hopped" (bagless) hop pellets to break up and sink to the bottom before transfering for packaging. If not, like Yooper said, just rack from the "middle".

For further clarity, I do not cold crash my dry hop. I ferment ales in the mid 60's, and just add the dry hops at that temperature 5 days before packaging. I've heard different opinions about dry hop temps from lots of great brewers, but dry hopping at fermentation/conditioning temp is just what I am happiest with.

So basically, if you do not find your dry hop "effective", it is more than likely a recipe issue. I just confirmed that my favorite Pale Ale uses 4.5 oz/ 5 gallons for a 5 day dry hop. A year ago, that would have sounded like an absurd recipe...in reality, it is absurd how good that beer is. And for your second concern about "mixing without aerating", obviously, any mixing you do will cause aerating - aerating is basically a component of mixing, so you can't have one without the other. I say do not worry about "mixing". Put the hops in, and if they sink, they sink, if they don't, they don't. Either way, just rack around them at time of packaging. If you are not bunching them up in a hop bag, even if they float on top of the beer, you are getting enough surface contact to do the job. If you taste the finished beer and want more aroma, add more hops to future recipes.

Eliminate your process variables. "This time I'll cold crash... next time I won't. This time I'll secondary....next time I won't. This time I'll dry hop 2 weeks....next time I'll dry hop 5 days." The more you change in your process from batch to batch, the harder it will be to duplicate a good recipe, or make conscious tweeks to a recipe you are looking to improve. I am not saying to change your practices, or do things the way I do. Rather, think a bit about what you want to achieve, look at your options and equipment, and settle on something that you can easily replicate.

Joe

 

[jsweet]

Wow, thanks for taking the time for this very long and informative post! None of those were really "questions" I had -- I'd already been aware of most of those options/tradeoffs/pros/cons, but as I said, I am still working out my own personal process -- but even still, it's always nice to hear someone give their thoughtful perspective on it.

Re: whole vs. pellet hops... well, on this batch, I bought what was available, which meant pellet for the Warrior hops (kettle) and whole for the Amarillo and Simcoe hops (some kettle, some dry hop). Actually, that's been the case with pretty much all my batches so far, I think only once have I really had a choice. I think I'm starting to agree with you that pellet are just easier, though.

Re: Transferring from bk to primary, yeah, like I say, that's a part of my process I am still tweaking heavily because I've still never been fully happy with any of the ones I used. The one I've liked best so far was pretty close to what you described: Yesterday, I used an auto-siphon to transfer from kettle to primary, and I was very happy with how it kept everything out, though I only did a half-assed job of trying to get a whirlpool going (I didn't feel like finding a suitably clean spoon and then sanitizing it, so I just tried to get a swirling action going with my immersion chiller... it worked well enough to stir, but not well enough to concentrate the trub in the middle of the pot) and so I wasn't super-pleased with how much wort I ended up leaving behind with the trub and such. But overall it's been my favorite method so far. Next time I'll actually sanitize a freakin' spoon and do the whirlpool right, and see how that works out for me.

I also do not typically secondary, although I think next time I dry-hop I am going to try it. I used a secondary once, when adding coconut and cocoa powder to a beer. I think I am probably going to fall in the "no secondary, unless dry hopping or making other additions" camp -- but since I've only dry hopped ONCE (and haven't yet tasted the result) it's a bit early for me to say for sure

One thing about your post that was very informative was your thoughts about length of dry-hopping. I hadn't given much thought to that, and was just going to do 7 days (give or take, depending on how my life schedule works out) since that's what it said in Yooper's recipe. I will surely keep your comments in mind as I experiment further with my process.

The batch I brewed yesterday was my sixth, and I only have two that are fully bottle-conditioned! So I've got a looooot of experimenting to do still before I figure out what works for me. Totally agree about not changing too much per batch, though...

 

[diS]

I just confirmed that my favorite Pale Ale uses 4.5 oz/ 5 gallons for a 5 day dry hop.

1st of all thanks for a lot of useful informations.

My question is about amount of hops added at dry hopping. So far I read a lot of articles and I mostly I get same information: 0.5 - 1 oz for 5 gallon batches.
I mean, this 4.5 oz pretty over-sizes that 0.5 - 1 oz, also it is larger than weight of all hops that I add during boil.

Do you use this weight only for Pale Ale, or all your styles (where you do dry hopping) include this large amount of hops?

 

[Wakadaka]

A lot of good information on here. How I "filter" my wort is just by pouring the whole kettle through a bag on its way to the primary. Won't work if you are using carboys, but it tends to work alright for me. A lot of proteins and some hops get through, but they all settle.

I wouldn't worry much about your dry hops. I don't know what you expected them to do, but I find it unlikely that hops are going to remain right in the middle of a carboy. My dry hops have always floated for some reason, but I imagine as long as they are saturated with beer they are doing their job.

4.5 oz seems like a pretty extreme amount of hops for a PA dry hop, especially if they are all the same hop variety. I imagine there is a point of diminishing returns, but I have no idea what it is.

And as far as 5 day dry hop, no more, no less. I don't really buy into any strict timeline rules like that when it comes to brewing. Probably just my personality too, but I don't think rules like that are necessarily beneficial to brew by. For example the 3 weeks at 70 degrees for bottle conditioning. If I made the rule I would say don't post "My Beer Tastes Bad" until 5 weeks at 70, 1 week in fridge, but I also start enjoying several beers after 2 weeks at 70 and a few days in the fridge.

Your definitely doing yourself a favor in figuring out what works best for you, and how you want to brew your beer. Theres a lot of opinions on here, and I haven't tried anything suggested from this site that hasn't produced great beer. But there are many ways to skin a cat.

 

[jfowler1]

I agree completely, and like I mentioned, if you talked to me two years ago, I would have thought 4.5 oz / 5G seemed absurd. In some ways, it is.

I genuinely understand your confusion. I too always heard and practiced the .5-1 oz / gallon dry hop number, and yes, this 4oz/5G hop rate blows that convention out of the water. The first time I made Tasty McDole's JBA, I thought to myself, "2 oz of Centennial for the dry hop; is this guy nuts?"

It is not being done just to do it, it is being done because commercial brewers were finding their best dry hop character came from a short contact time, but because of that short contact time, more hops were needed for desired effect. The result was all the oils, flavors and aromas, while keeping the grassiness to a minimum. I'd imagine production and turn over times may have helped this philosophy along as well.

In many ways, it is not much different than hop bursting the last 20 minutes of a boil. The same breweries that are using the seemingly ultra high dry hop quantities are also getting half of their IBU's through whirlpool utilization, which takes place after flame out. Search really hard for that concept in The Complete Joy....I don't think you'll find it.

The truth is, these short time/high quantity dry hop levels are to some degree an exercise in excess, but at the same time, very reflective of the West Coast Brewing movement of aggressively hopped beers. It is a regional thing. I am from Jersey, but even in the Northeast, there are some very successful nano's/micro's embracing more aggressive hopping in their beer. This part of the country was founded on English style ales, but in my opinion, the shake up is more than welcome.

This is pretty cutting edge stuff, and a far cry from:

1 oz Cascade at 60 for bittering
1 oz Cascade at 30 for flavor
1 oz Cascade at 5 for aroma

This isn't really a great conversation for the beginners forum, but that old B/F/A mentality is really misguided. It is a fine place to start to get your hands wrapped around how the boil effects hop character and perceived bitterness, but it is by no means a rule. You still get flavor at 60, and you still get bitterness at 5. The stupid utilization formulas just do a bad job of showing you that, and historically, the brewing books didn't explain it well either.

The Can You Brew It series of the Jamil Show has really brought this late hop/big dry hop movement to light, especially in the homebrew world. To quickly answer the question, no this is not specific to Pale Ales, but yes, it is specific to style, and more specifically, like I mentioned before, specific to regional preferences within that style. Personally, I think any American Ale (Pale, Amber, Brown) or American/Imperial IPA would benefit from this high quantity, low contact time regiment. A British Bitter; not so much. If you have something English, I would still say to use restraint, but keep the 5 day rule in the back of your head.

Here are a couple examples of huge dry hops in beers you may know (and these are all for 5 Gallon recipes).

(Thanks again to EricCSU for always getting the recipes in writing)

Epic Pale Ale - dry hopped in two steps for a total of 4 oz
Cardinal Pale Ale - 2.6 oz
Captain Lawrence Xtra Gold - 2.5 oz
and my adder - Maine Brewing Company Peeper Ale - 4.5 oz
Vinny's (originally issued) Pliny Clone - 3.75 oz
and best for last....
Avery Maharaja - 9.5 oz (you read that right)

So as you see, it is dependent on what you like, but the 1 oz dry hop rule is really a thing of the past.

I hope that was clearer,

Joe

 

[jsweet]

I don't know what you expected them to do, but I find it unlikely that hops are going to remain right in the middle of a carboy. My dry hops have always floated for some reason, but I imagine as long as they are saturated with beer they are doing their job.

Well, my concern was that since there was already a layer of floating kettle hops, that the dry hops would just sit on top of that and never get soaked all the way.

I think I may still get a little bit of reduced effectiveness from that -- some of the dry hops still look a little, well, "dry". But most of them seem to be working their way down in there.