Primary to Secondary/Cold-Crashing and Dry-Hopping

[doublebogey10]

I have a pale ale in secondary right now being dry-hopped. In an effort to get a little cleaner and clearer finish and get better hop aroma from the dry-hop, I cold-crashed prior to racking from primary to secondary.

Temperature control is one of the things that I don't fixate on and was just curious if there is anything wrong with this process.

Primary sat in the mid 60s for two weeks.
Cold-crashed down to 40 or higher 30s for about four days (longer than I would have normally but life/work got in the way).
Racked to secondary with the dry hop and it's back up to mid 60s now. Going to dry-hop for a week.

All of this seems rather straight-forward, I think. Is there anything wrong with that kind of temperature fluctuation ... crashing so low and letting secondary go back up to mid 60s?
Yeast had basically finished -- gravity was about 1.011 when I began crashing.
And, is there anything wrong with crashing again before I keg it?

Thanks

 

[Brulosopher]

To answer your question: no, there's nothing wrong with crashing again.

But...

You really don't need to rack to secondary, it has no impact on clarity or hop flavor. Here's an exBEERiment I recently performed on the issue that seems to corroborate other experiments folks have done.

 

[Calichusetts]

You should be good. I just switched back to using a secondary and boy are the results amazing. I found that when I was trying to make a hop bomb, I just never got the same results from primary only.

I'm guessing that when I added my hop bag, it was hitting the trub and yeast and playing a role in the final flavor.

To each his own...

 

[doublebogey10]

To answer your question: no, there's nothing wrong with crashing again.

But...

You really don't need to rack to secondary, it has no impact on clarity or hop flavor. Here's an exBEERiment I recently performed on the issue that seems to corroborate other experiments folks have done.

While not nearly as controlled as yours, I did a similar experiment this summer with a session IPA. Clarity, at the very least, had a subtle difference. But hop aroma from the dry hop was noticeably different.
Since then, my guess has been that's because the process of cold-crashing and reduction of yeast with the transfer to secondary is improving the utilization with the dry hop.
So I've been using the secondary regularly since then, in part because of that and in part because of practicality with my set up. I have two carboys and two buckets and I like to use the carboys for primary because it's easier for my blowoff tubes. And I like the buckets for secondary because they have spigots and it's easy to fill a couple bottles from there before I keg the rest.
Clearly, I am drawn more to the art of brewing rather than the science of it! But I'm trying to understand the latter a little more.

Thanks!

 

[doublebogey10]

You should be good. I just switched back to using a secondary and boy are the results amazing. I found that when I was trying to make a hop bomb, I just never got the same results from primary only.

I'm guessing that when I added my hop bag, it was hitting the trub and yeast and playing a role in the final flavor.

To each his own...

Am guessing you weigh down your hop bag with marbles or something like that? That's what I've been doing. Trying to figure out a way to weigh it down but suspend it with fishing line or something as well to keep it in middle of the bucket.

 

[Calichusetts]

Yeah. Haven't had the clarity or hoppiness since going to only primary. Clearly this isn't a primary vs secondary problem in the clear sense. Just nothing to stir up when I just use the secondary.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Brulosopher]

While not nearly as controlled as yours, I did a similar experiment this summer with a session IPA. Clarity, at the very least, had a subtle difference. But hop aroma from the dry hop was noticeably different.
Since then, my guess has been that's because the process of cold-crashing and reduction of yeast with the transfer to secondary is improving the utilization with the dry hop.
So I've been using the secondary regularly since then, in part because of that and in part because of practicality with my set up. I have two carboys and two buckets and I like to use the carboys for primary because it's easier for my blowoff tubes. And I like the buckets for secondary because they have spigots and it's easy to fill a couple bottles from there before I keg the rest.
Clearly, I am drawn more to the art of brewing rather than the science of it! But I'm trying to understand the latter a little more.

Thanks!

Nice! Any experimentation is totally up my alley. Did you happen to have unsuspecting friends taste both beers blind? If not, another explanation could simply be that your expectation of difference biased you into believing (seeing/tasting/smelling) there was a difference that perhaps wasn't there. Either way, you should post your results to experimentalbrew.com!