Dry hopping in Primary?
Does anyone do this on a regular basis? I've been trying to find some examples on here, but so far just some references to it, but no hard answers. I'm thinking that if I just dump my pellet hops in primary, I won't have to rack to a secondary, and just the bottling bucket should be enough to settle these things out .
I've never dry hopped before, and if a recipe called for it, I would just use Thirsty's method, and put them in at flame out. My reasoning is it shouldn't matter what time I put the pellet hops in they should settle in two weeks. I have a beer at the end of fermentation that's been going for 4 days now, I was wondering if it's ok to put in before the end of fermentation also, to get a head start on the dry hopping, that way there would be no extra time needed. Thanks, any imput would be great.
You can dry hop in primary but I'd add the hops after fermentation has completely stopped. Just make sure there isn't any airlock activity otherwise the CO2 with scrub your hop aroma and release it through the airlock.
Thanks, I knew that there had to be a reason
Actually.....
I haven't had a chance to try this yet but dry hopping in primary may be a good idea if you are dry hopping with whole hops.
Mike McDole won a spot in the Sam Adams longshot contest last year with his Double IPA. I am a loyal listener to The Brewing Network where he is a regular guest. Several months ago they asked him about his techniques for hop aroma as he brews quite a bit of highly hopped beers.
McDole dry hops in the primary to help with oxidation issues. When you add whole hops to a beer there is a lot of dead space in the flowers that contain air. When you add the hops to the beer you are also adding in that air. Some of it escapes but some of it oxidizes the beer. This results in a dry hopped beer that goes stale faster than most beers.
McDole gets around this by adding his dry hops to the primary fermentor by adding the hops about halfway through the primary ferment. He claims that there is just enough yeast activity left when he adds the hops that they use up the O2 and it prevents the premature staling. He adds about 20% more hops than one would normally to secondary to account for the minor "scrubbing" effect that the escaping CO2 has on wafting away some of that hop aroma.
Like I said I haven't tried this yet. But it made a lot of sense to me.
This years AHA Big Brew Day recipe courtesy of Fuller's is an Ordinary Bitter that calls for EKG's four days into the primary, in the secondary and in the keg. I bottled this so I added the keg addition in the secondary as well and this beer is fantastic.
Dry hopping in primary is just fine, no worries. Like Brewchez mentioned about Mike McDole, I usually add a little extra hoppage when putting them straight into primary, mostly because I haven't done enough side by side testing to see if CO2 scrubs some of the hop aroma. One of the only real issues I've found is if you use pellets early in the fementation, a good bit of them ends up on the sides of your bucket/carboy. Waiting a little further into the fermentation will help to avoid this.
A little side note, you can also reuse your dry hops. I limit the reuse to similar beers - all using the same syle of yeast, but I've found no problems racking fresh wort onto a sack of hops and letting it go. After about 4 or 5 uses, I go ahead and pitch the sack in the trash. Reuse and recycle!
DT
I just got done doing a batch like this, where after primary fermentation was done, dumped in 1oz Cascade for dry hops. Let it sit 7 days, and then bottled. The APA came out AWESOME.
bruguru wrote:
Does anyone do this on a regular basis? I've been trying to find some examples on here, but so far just some references to it, but no hard answers. I'm thinking that if I just dump my pellet hops in primary, I won't have to rack to a secondary, and just the bottling bucket should be enough to settle these things out .
I've never dry hopped before, and if a recipe called for it, I would just use Thirsty's method, and put them in at flame out. My reasoning is it shouldn't matter what time I put the pellet hops in they should settle in two weeks. I have a beer at the end of fermentation that's been going for 4 days now, I was wondering if it's ok to put in before the end of fermentation also, to get a head start on the dry hopping, that way there would be no extra time needed. Thanks, any imput would be great.
very cool, I put an ounce of cascade pellets in the primary 4 days after pitching, and my fg was at the target already 1.018. I used Safeale S-04 for the yeast, and they say it ferments pretty fast. I've been using dried yeast more and more now, I guess I just like the convience. Plus they say that if forms a compact sediment which i'm hoping will take the pellet debris with it. I'm just all for simplicity, and if a number of people have done it, and it turns out fine for me, I'll continue to use it.
bruguru wrote:
very cool, I put an ounce of cascade pellets in the primary 4 days after pitching, and my fg was at the target already 1.018. I used Safeale S-04 for the yeast, and they say it ferments pretty fast. I've been using dried yeast more and more now, I guess I just like the convience. Plus they say that if forms a compact sediment which i'm hoping will take the pellet debris with it. I'm just all for simplicity, and if a number of people have done it, and it turns out fine for me, I'll continue to use it.
I love Safale-04. Probably my most used yeast.
Just bottle the African Amber that I dry hopped in the Primary, and it turned out unbelievable. I'll probably do this all the time, I didn't even put it in a secondary, just threw in in the bottles. Saves a lot of time, I pulled an fg, and came up right on target again, 1.018. I brewed this on the 15th, and bottled it today, so 13 days. No sign of the hop pellets, as they all settled in the sediment. I have a Labor day cookout to go to so It feels good that I have this bottled, and a Belgian wit, both done today, and both came out great. Can't wait to unveil both at the end of august. Thanks for everyone's input, and saving me another week, and more work.