Dry Hopping - Secondary or Fermenter?

[bobovski]

Hi all. Tomorrow I'm brewing my first IPA and I'm going to dry hop it. Is it better/more advisable to add the hops in the primary or in the secondary? Thanks!

 

[Yooper]

In secondary. If you do it in primary, the fermentation and co2 will cause the hops aroma to "blow off" along with the co2 that comes out during fermentation. Wait until it's completely finished before dry hopping.

 

[BierMuncher]

Normally I'll dry hop the secondary. The primary reason is I like to harvest my yeast cake and adding hops to the primary would muddle the goodness on the bottom of the primary.

Yoop is correct that you want to avoid adding hops to any beer that is actively fermenting or still gassing off a lot of CO2.

You can dry hop in the primary if you're going to let it condition in that vessel for an extended period of time...but only after you've reached terminal gravity and the beer is essentially "dormant".

 

[bobovski]

Thanks for the replies! Two very good reasons for dry hopping in secondary...

 

[surfbrewer]

Along with secondary hopping, I will also put dry hops into my kegs via tea balls. Works great and you get some incredible hop characteristics.