IPA fermentation timing

[Sharkness]

Hi all,

I'm a novice/intermediate just returning to the hobby after a few years off for grad school. When I left off I was just starting to make beers that I thought rivaled commercial quality. I just did my second all grain batch, which is a session IPA with 2 oz of dry hops. I'm now six days into fermentation in a 6.5 gallon carboy (roughly .75 gallons of headspace), and airlock activity has slowed to a bubble every seven seconds or so. I'm planning to purge a keg and push the beer into that with co2 when the time comes, but I have a couple questions about timing in order to retain the freshest hop character and minimize oxygenation. I've done lots of searches and read different threads, but I can't tell if there's any consensus.

Approach 1
Open the fermenter today and drop my hops in, hoping that the remaining yeast activity will purge the headspace.
Push to purged keg (filled w/ starsan and then pushed out) with co2 in a week, purge headspace, and then allow to condition before cold crashing and serving.

Approach 2
Keep in primary fermenter for another couple weeks.
Sanitize keg and dump sani out, suspend hop bag with dental floss in the keg, purge keg repeatedly with co2 @ ~30psi.
Push beer into keg with co2, purge headspace again.
Allow to dry hop for a week, then pull bag up (not opening keg), cold crash, and pour a couple pints out in order to clear sediment from around the dip tube and bring the level to below the hop bag.

So my questions are these:
- Which process will yield the less-oxidized beer, or should I do a third thing?
- What timing/order for each stage (primary fermentation, drop hopping, keg conditioning at room temp, cold crash/keg conditioning at serving temp) will yield the freshest/most prominent hop character?

 

[Jag75]

This is what I found works best for me . I always leave beer in the fermenter for 3 weeks . I dont do secondaries . With IPAs I will dry hop about 3-5 days out from packaging. So dry hopping on day 17 then kegging on 21. I also purge with co2 as I'm dry hopping. I just run co2 into the FV as I open it and add the hops. Dry hopping at the end has positively influenced hop brightness and flavor . It just seems fresher to me .

 

[AJinJacksonville]

^^^ what he said...

 

[Sharkness]

This is what I found works best for me . I always leave beer in the fermenter for 3 weeks . I dont do secondaries . With IPAs I will dry hop about 3-5 days out from packaging. So dry hopping on day 17 then kegging on 21. I also purge with co2 as I'm dry hopping. I just run co2 into the FV as I open it and add the hops. Dry hopping at the end has positively influenced hop brightness and flavor . It just seems fresher to me .

Thanks for the response. That makes sense to me. How do you go about running the CO2 into your fermenter while you are dry hopping?

 

[Jag75]

Thanks for the response. That makes sense to me. How do you go about running the CO2 into your fermenter while you are dry hopping?

I have a cf5 . I just run a few psi as I take off the cooling coil then drop hops in . Before I had this fermenter I would just crack the lid and put a hose into the opening .

 

[CascadesBrewer]

There are lots of different approaches. It is good to play around with different processes and see what fits your tastes and schedule.

These days I almost always keg a beer like an IPA at day 12 or 13. I often brew on a Sunday, and keg my beer on a Friday evening or Saturday morning. I found that after moving to temp controlled fermentation, boosting the temp up to around 72F as fermentation slows helps to ensure consistent and complete fermentation.

I will typically dry hop 3 to 5 days before packaging. If my schedule works out, I will dry hop for 2 days then cold crash for 2 days. I have tried blasting some CO2 into the headspace, but I usually just pull off the stopper and quickly dump in the pellets loose. I then do a closed transfer into a purged keg.

I have recently played around with dry hopping cool/cold. Basically 2 days at temps from 50F to 35F for my last 4 Pale Ale/IPA batches. My last IPA was dry hopped with 2 oz of Centennial and 2 oz of Chinook and it has a very intense hop character that leans toward the dank side where I expected a more floral note.

Scott Janish article: A Case for Short And Cool Dry Hopping - Scott Janish

I have only dry hopped in the keg once with poor results (user error I guess...seems that the hop bag sunk to the bottom around the dip tube and every beer had some hop debris in it). Since I moved to closed transfers and purging kegs, I am hesitant to try again.