Dry hopping ?

[Allekornbrauer]

Hello I have a question about what is the best way to add dry hop’s? In the primary fermenter after the fermentation has finished or add them to Secondary fermenter, or in the keg. An also do people add the dry hops bag or through them loose in to the primary or secondary fermenter I know if you do keg hopping you need to bag them?

 

[enkamania]

I dry hop in the keg. Two days at room temp and then cold crash. I use http://www.clearbeerdraughtsystem.com/ in the keg, so I can just throw them in.

 

[V-Fib]

I dry hop in the keg with them in a SS mesh or a paint strainer mesh bag that I close with a zip tie. I leave them in the for the life of the keg but secure them at about the 3-4 gallon depth in the keg.

Prior to kegging I dropped them in my primary loose once fermentation was done about 4 days prior to bottling.

 

[Rob2010SS]

I dry hop in primary and just toss them in loose. The cold crash keeps from getting that into the keg when you transfer. I always plan for 6 gallons in the fermenter so that when i transfer to the keg i don't have to try and get every drop out of the fermenter. I never transfer to secondary unless I'm adding fruit or oak or anything.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Hello I have a question about what is the best way to add dry hop’s? In the primary fermenter after the fermentation has finished or add them to Secondary fermenter, or in the keg. An also do people add the dry hops bag or through them loose in to the primary or secondary fermenter I know if you do keg hopping you need to bag them?

This is akin to asking what's the best way to worship God... There's good solid reasons to dry hop at all times on the cold side, so a lot comes down to personal taste and what works for your process. As mentioned above, a lot of homebrewers don't bother with secondary these days, certianly not for the kind of beers that tend to get dry-hopped.

Cloudwater did a test where they dry-hopped one version of their famous DIPA during fermentation, one after and asked people which they preferred. People were split 50:50, but the absolute favourite was a 50:50 blend of the two, so now they dry hop during fermentation and after it.

Dry hopping doesn't need to take long - most of the good stuff gets into the beer within 24 hours, and certainly 3-4 days is plenty.

Personally, if I had to choose one time to dry hop, it would be towards the end of fermentation - say 1.020, maybe 1.025. The yeast are still active so they will scavenge any oxygen that you let in, there's scope for greater complexity from biotransformation by the yeast, but the beer doesn't spend any longer than it needs to in contact with the hops and you can just rack them off when you package.

You get slightly better extraction if you have them loose, but it's easier to handle them if they're confined in a bag - aside from the effect on your wallet the ideal is 10-20% extra in a bag...

 

[Calder]

I usually use secondaries, so I can collect clean yeast for re-use. Add hops to primary or secondary for about a week after fermentation is complete (do some research and see what you think is right - lots of discussion on the right length of time).

With leaf hops, I put them in a 5 gallon paint straining bag and weigh it down with sanitized marbles, and then squeeze the bag after racking the beer to the bottling bucket.

With pellet hops I just toss them in the fermenter and then use a 5 gallon paint straining bag over the inlet of the racking cane when I rack t the bottling bucket.

I don't cold crash - don't have the capability to do it.

 

[day_trippr]

Hello I have a question about what is the best way to add dry hop’s? In the primary fermenter after the fermentation has finished or add them to Secondary fermenter, or in the keg. An also do people add the dry hops bag or through them loose in to the primary or secondary fermenter I know if you do keg hopping you need to bag them?

First, skip the whole "secondary" concept, it's not only unnecessary for most recipes/styles, it's inherently risky wrt quality of product.
Otherwise, as has been related above, there's no "best" way, there are just "ways".
My way is to use free-swimming pellets in the primary fermentor, sometimes a couple of rounds (neipa's with the first "bio-hop" round, followed by a traditional dry hop round, for one example), then cold-crash them to the fermentor bottom and rack over them...

Cheers!

 

[day_trippr]

I usually use secondaries, so I can collect clean yeast for re-use.[...]

Old school. I respect that, but this is the 21st century and we're even smarter
Lose the secondary and approach the issue from the other end: over-build your next starter and set aside the extra.
Much easier, way cleaner, and potentially less selective. And you don't risk oxidation by the extra racking...

Cheers!

 

[user 246304]

Old school. I respect that, but this is the 21st century and we're even smarter
Lose the secondary and approach the issue from the other end: over-build your next starter and set aside the extra.
Much easier, way cleaner, and potentially less selective. And you don't risk oxidation by the extra racking...

Cheers!

Trippr, I know I'm old school as well - but if you take this approach, I'd think you're selecting for yeast that ferment your starter very well - and depending on the prop. regime, not even selecting for yeast that finish out. It seems to me that if you want a yeast to ferment a given beer, you should select from among the yeast that do the job on that beer, in those conditions (which differ from the starter environment) - yes?

 

[day_trippr]

Wait - what? "not even selecting for yeast that finish out"?
In a starter?
I mean, low octane, highly oxygenated, warmer than any sane person would run an actual batch?

Aaaanyway....

Step back from the ledge and consider this: do you think any yeast propagation company uses recognizable recipes to crank out metric crap tons of yeast?

Cheers! (you know the answer to that )

[edit] Let me turn the table around: you've harvested some 1318 yeast from an ESB - or better yet, from an NEIPA you bio-hopped the daylights out of .
A month down the road you want to use that strain on a sweet stout. Is it the same as what you poured out of the package, or was it somehow "changed" along the way? Are you going to ranch two branches of the same strain?

 

[user 246304]

Wait - what? "not even selecting for yeast that finish out"?
In a starter?
I mean, low octane, highly oxygenated, warmer than any sane person would run an actual batch?

Aaaanyway....

Step back from the ledge and consider this: do you think any yeast propagation company uses recognizable recipes to crank out metric crap tons of yeast?

Cheers! (you know the answer to that )

[edit] Let me turn the table around: you've harvested some 1318 yeast from an ESB - or better yet, from an NEIPA you bio-hopped the daylights out of .
A month down the road you want to use that strain on a sweet stout. Is it the same as what you poured out of the package, or was it somehow "changed" along the way? Are you going to ranch two branches of the same strain?

Sorry, bit lost on the first bit, trippr. What I mean to say, is that the conditions in a prop., and the harvest of the yeast from that prop., are different from those in a brewery fermentation - at least typically, in my experience (e.g., just one - but if your last step in a prop. is x 10, and your brewery step is x 4, that alone is different). And it probably grows wearisome to hear, but I'm going on memory - but first generation yeasts are whacky. Things don't hit their stride till a few in - because by growing, fermenting and finishing out in the conditions you're maintaining for your given beer, over time you're automatically selecting for optimization, in that environment.

So while yeast propagation companies don't go through brewery ferments to manufacture, neither are breweries pitching with fresh, 1st generation, propagation company yeast (not ones I know, anyway). I know at Goose Island, I think we'd go up to as many as 20 generations or until weird signs started to show. Again, memory, which is faulty.

From my cheesemaking days, it's the same thing - buying cultures to pitch and wash rinds, yields an extraordinarily different cheese from those made down the road, using whey and rind morge cultures harvested from the ambient conditions of my vat and aging cave. In fact, in traditional alpine cheesemaking, your first couple uses of a given seed culture are not used for your main cheeses --too expensive. You "warm up" the cultures by getting them going in the environment they're going to be doing, as production cheeses, by doing quicker turnaround, "lesser" cheeses in similar (though not exact) circumstances. (E.g., raclette or reblochon, for a Beaufort main cheese).

It's the same with sourdough, though it's less critical, vastly so, imo. But there's no denying a difference between an "old" starter maintained by recharging v. a brand new sour culture.

Not sure if I'm being clear in what I'm trying to get across, but that's my experience, anyway.

Edit" Sorry, just saw your edit. No, I wouldn't maintain 10 strains for 10 beers in a lineup. But I also wouldn't buy afresh each time I wanted to brew. I'd argue the difference between first generation and 5th generation yeast, is likely going to be greater than that between the same yeast of equal generation, in different brews. That's my main point and again, this is just memory. I'm certainly interested in hearing more about this.

 

[Calder]

Old school. I respect that, but this is the 21st century and we're even smarter
Lose the secondary and approach the issue from the other end: over-build your next starter and set aside the extra.
Much easier, way cleaner, and potentially less selective. And you don't risk oxidation by the extra racking...

I do both, and I find repitching from slurry is waaayyyy easier and quicker than rebuilding a starter.

I'll repitch maybe 1 to 5 times before going back to the original yeast from the starter.