Secondaries and dry hops, fruit, etc.

[supermoth]

There are so many threads on this forum about how racking to secondary has largely become obsolete, with the exceptions of bulk aging (makes sense) and using dry hops or fruit. I've even read of people dry hopping in primary, just dumping the hops on in. Other than making a mess of the yeast for later recovery, is this considered a bad practice? And is the purpose of racking onto the fruit to avoid oxidation?

 

[TTB-J]

I have always just dumped my hops in the primary, works out fine for me, but does make washing yeast a little more tedious. As far as fruit, you don't want to mix that with the yeast cake for multiple reasons, but the biggest is probably taste. I've never fruited a beer, though, so I'm not sure what experience people have had just dumping that in the primary too. If you kept the temperature low, I don't see why you couldn't do it all together.

 

[orcus332]

Im looking to dry hop my first batch and that's the consensus that i came to after reading many articles. That dry hopping in the primary is fine.

 

[Calichusetts]

I secondary for a couple reasons when dry hopping: easier to clean the primary, and there is just way to much debris in the carboy to make me feel comfortable racking into bottles. I want my carboy as clean as possible the day I bottle and a secondary is the answer to that.

+1 on the fruit...keep it off the yeast