Pages: 1 2
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.
Thanks for the informative thread, guys. I see now why I am not getting good hop nose from dryhopping- I have put them in at the beginning of the active primary fermentation! While I just joined the forum, I have been homebrewing for almost 20 years, but still trying to figure out this dryhopping thing.
The reason I even want to do in the primary is because I grow Cascade hops and I want to be able to use them for dryhopping rather than pellets or plugs, but when I tried in my 5-gallon secondary carboy, they and the air they contain displaced so much room for the beer. I use a plastic bucket for primary, so that's easy, and maybe I should just do as suggested and put in after active fermentation has stopped, but a couple of concerns and questions:
1) They float at the top so much and I wonder if any but the bottom layer are doing anything. Anyone use a bag with a weight in it to submerge them? Or is this just not necessary, and the wicking action of the fluid does a sufficient job? I'd like to use alot of hops, like 4 oz-, which makes a thick layer- this may be less of a concern when using less. And if you add after the active fermentation has taken place, how do get them soaked into the beer without adding too much oxygen- stir in gently? The weighted bag would solve that- could just drop them in.
2) If I am going to let them sit for a week after active fermentation in the primary, that seems like a long time to be sitting in a plastic primary bucket, but maybe not such an issue?
3) If I switch to doing in the secondary, how do folks deal with the displacement issue with whole hops- get a 7 gallon instead? But then there's still the floating problem, and I couldn't use a bag in a carboy . . .
Thanks for your thoughts! Matt
(p.s.- I just tried that new Budweiser "American Ale" to see if its claim of dryhopping with Cascades came through, but I couldn't detect any fresh hop aroma and it seemed like just a malty amber ale- no surprise I guess but I just had to see)
Here is a great trick andrew jensen came up with. http://www.brewingkb.com/homebrewing/ho … page3.html
Thanks Rph. For all here's what Andrew Jensen wrote:
I've got a technique for dry hopping that I'd like to share with you guys.
Recently dry hopped a double IPA with 2 ounces of Amarillo (whole.) I'm sure like a lot of you guys I like to do my secondary fermentation in a glass carboy. This makes it a little tricky to dry hop. Originally I would just throw the hops loose in the bottom and rack onto them. I still think this is a good method and very easy to do but I just felt like the hops were absorbing a fair amount of liquid. So I then went to the bag method which isn't the easiest to cram two ounces of whole hops in a bag through the small carboy opening much less getting it out again. My problem with this method is the hop bag floats and a large amount of my hops are sitting above the liquid line. I understand that they have absorbed fluid but it didn't seem like a very effective way. So next I heard of sanitizing marbles and throwing them in the hop bag causing it to sink in the fermentor. Better but I didn't care for the idea of my hops buried in a layer of trub at the bottom so again back to the drawing board. Finally my brew buddy devised a great solution. We crammed the hops into the bag through the mouth of the carboy with the marbles in place but we used fishing line to tie up the hop bag and ran a length to the bottom of the airlock keeping the hop bag suspended in the middle of the carboy, fully submerged yet off of the trub! This is definitely not the easiest route but with a little practice gauging how many marbles (steelies work best) and how much fishing line you need this is a pretty effective way to dry hop. Not to mention when it's time to bottle you pop the airlock and the hop bag comes with it. No more trying to fish out a swollen bag of hops, getting it back out the carboy mouth still takes some finnese though.
I dry hopped w/ 1 Oz of Hallertau just after pitching the yeast. So what's the worst that could happen to my brew (spicy German wheat ale)? Will the aroma be compromised? This will not affect the yeast (Nottingham) and fermentation right?
Fermentation will be fine. Your hop aroma won't be compromised but you just won't get as much as you were planning.
Pages: 1 2
Search Home Brewing Knowledge Base
Custom Search
|