"With pale ales there is no upside to using a secondary unless you need to free up your primary fermentor for another batch."
Absolutely, 100% correct, considering home made pale ale. Second fermentation is required when mash is rested at 140 to 145F. The rest is omitted in most home brew all grain recipes. Second fermentation involves, conversion, complex sugar and the way that yeast deals with complex sugar during secondary fermentation and during the natural carbonation and aging cycle. The problem is, when secondary fermentation isn't needed, the types of sugar that produce ale aren't there and that means that the beer isn't pale ale, just something pale that the recipe calls ale.
Syrup does not contain the types of sugar that are involved with second fermentation, it's syrup, not malted barley. To make second fermentation work with syrup and to make brewing a little more interesting, purchase two to three pounds of Weyermann floor malt or malt of similar quality (under modified, low protein, malt) and some sauer malz, crushed together, and mash in with RO water at 1-1.25qt./1lb and rest the mash in the 140 to 145F range for about 45 minutes. Sparge/rinse the mash with enough hot RO water around 165F to make up a final volume of 2 to 3 qts. If a bag is used to hold the mash do not squeeze it out. To help with consistency take a gravity reading.
Boil the maltose water and skim off hot break as it forms. When the hot break stops forming or drastically reduces, mix the liquid with the syrup water and boil it all together. Skim off hot break, add bittering hops after hot break reduces and boil for about an hour. Use the volume of maltose water in place of some of the brewing water. Maltodextrin should be added because during second fermentation the beer will thin.
To reduce the risk of oxidation and infection plastic buckets shouldn't be used. A glass carboy with a two port cap will work fine. A port for CO2 and a port for a blow off tube or a racking cane. CO2 is best for transfers and the receiver can be purged of air as beer is added.
Dry hopping. The pH of beer is low, ale pH is lower than lager pH. When dry hops are added to low pH beer, staling compounds are released due to chemical changes caused by low pH and the beer rapidly, stales. Beta causes problems, but the Beta, Alpha percentage of the finest hops are within a decimal point.
Dry hopping involves placing hops in a pressure vessel with water at 213-214F, pH adjusted to 8-9. The hops are rested for 10 minutes without boiling because the vessel is pressurized. The hop water is flash cooled, pH is reduced and it's added in at blending, bottling, kegging.
Purchase a Randall, instead of dry hopping.
I'm not sure if hops, singularly, defines or names IPA or if the preservative characteristic is important to the degree that homebrewer's take it. During the time period IPA was at the least triple decocted. The method produces a very stabile and balanced wort with the ability to naturally carbonate and age without deteriorating. The wort is void of nutrients that Gram-N bacteria thrive on which reduces the risk of spoilage. Due to the wort being very clean, less hops were used, hop character "sticks" better to clean wort. The beer was aged in oak barrels lined with a thick layer of brewers pitch, pitch acts like a balloon when the beer expands and contracts. The beer is not in contact with oak, except maybe a little bit at the plugs. The plugs are pitched except at the sealing point. Once in awhile a keg leaks, loses pressure, and due to temperature changes the beer expands and contracts and infection sets in.
Depending on the time frame ships were steam propelled and mechanical refrigeration was being used in breweries and onboard ships. During the same time frame there were freighters, no doubt, using old, leaking, foul smelling, sail boats, transporting IPA to India taking six months to arrive. Writing stories about that kind of stuff makes more interesting content.
