Dry hopping lager using keg as secondary...

[Brian Parfitt]

Hi all. I just wanted to toss this out to see what others thought of my plan regarding a lager I am planning to dry hop.

I currently have the lager in my conical lagering via a glycol chiller. That's been going for about 45 days now. I plan on brewing another batch tonight and would like to use the conical to ferment this next batch.

I plan on tapping the lager mid July and would prefer to let it condition several more weeks before I dry hop it a week before tapping. My plan is:

Transfer the lager to a 'secondary' keg and place in my fridge. Let sit for several weeks.

A week before tapping, dry hop the lager in the keg
I'd do my best to keep a CO2 purge on the keg while opening to dry hop to minimize oxygen ingress.

Last I would rack the beer out of the dry hop keg and into a serving keg
I was planning on using a shortened dip tube to leave particulates behind.

With all this said... I do have a Fermonster fermenter that I could just use and skip all the hoop jumping to free up my conical. But I would lose temperature control during fermentation of the beer I plan to brew tonight.

Thoughts?

 

[Sammy86]

Hi all. I just wanted to toss this out to see what others thought of my plan regarding a lager I am planning to dry hop.

I currently have the lager in my conical lagering via a glycol chiller. That's been going for about 45 days now. I plan on brewing another batch tonight and would like to use the conical to ferment this next batch.

I plan on tapping the lager mid July and would prefer to let it condition several more weeks before I dry hop it a week before tapping. My plan is:

Transfer the lager to a 'secondary' keg and place in my fridge. Let sit for several weeks.

A week before tapping, dry hop the lager in the keg
I'd do my best to keep a CO2 purge on the keg while opening to dry hop to minimize oxygen ingress.

Last I would rack the beer out of the dry hop keg and into a serving keg
I was planning on using a shortened dip tube to leave particulates behind.

With all this said... I do have a Fermonster fermenter that I could just use and skip all the hoop jumping to free up my conical. But I would lose temperature control during fermentation of the beer I plan to brew tonight.

Thoughts?

Why not just use a musilin bag with the dry hops in it and rack it to the serving keg? My only concern is transferring the beer so much. Your plan will certainly work I just don’t see why taking the risk of moving the beer more than once.