When to add?

[skidkid267]

New IPA in the carboy. Nice active fermentation went on for about 4 days after 24 hrs. Question, recipe says 7 days for addition of dry hops. Is this 7 days after brewing or 7 days left in fermentation? I know this sounds like a stupid question but everything went so well with this brew, I don't want to F it up.

Cheers,

Brent

 

[mkultra69]

I would think that it meant to leave the dry hops in the beer for 7 days. So after fermentation has ended add hops, let sit for 7 (or more) days. What I do for my IPA is after fermentation has ended, I chill the beer for a few days to get as much of the yeast to drop out as I can and then add the dry hops.

 

[Revvy]

If you dry hop during fermentation, the large amount of co2 that is being produced will drive those volatile aroma esters right out your airlock, instead of in the beer where you want it. So it sort of defeats the purpose of dry hopping for aroma anyway.

Without going into the whole sorted tale which you can look around a read for yourself, you really shouldn't rack to secondary until fermentation is complete anyway.

And nowadays as more and more brewers are opting for long primary/no secondary (again you can look around for the discussions) many folks are dry hopping in the primary, after fermentation is finished. My last two batches I dryhopped in primary on the 14th day for another two weeks. They came out great.

When I used to secondary I added hops on the 14rh day after yeast pitch for 2 weeks. Or on the 21st day for 1 week.

 

[skidkid267]

gotcha...kind of was leaning in that direction. Even though I am sort of a newb I really would tend to see the benefits of leaving the yeasties alone and letting them do their job for 3+ weeks or so. I guess i'll wait for another week, pitch the hops and let it go for another 7-10 days or so.

Thanks Brothers...