Large dry hop addition - is a secondary necessary?

[mofox1]

I'm a fan of keeping things simple, mostly because I'm lazy. So normally all my dry hopping is done straight in the fermenter, usually when the beer has reached/almost reached FG and then left for a week. Then I'll CC, if doing that, or skip straight to kegging/bottling.

Current IPA is going to get a fairly decent dry hop dosage - around 13g/L. In a bit of an oversight, there is no sediment reducer on this fermentor (which I've found works well enough to reduce the amount of hop material pulled out if you are being careful).

So with around 300g of dry hops (pellets) going into the fermentor, I'm wondering if I should bother transferring to a secondary for dry hopping. Or something else. One of the HBT threads mentions a hop bag weighted down with a shot glass... I guess this could be done in primary or secondary.

What have folks here done when using largish dry hop rates? What has and (maybe more importantly) what hasn't worked?

 

[Milk-lizard84]

I usually dry hop in my primary fermenter. Wait till my pre determined dry hop days have been reached, cold crash then rack to a secondary for bulk
priming.
I have never bothered racking to a secondary seems kinda pointless to me. Do you bulk prime or just use drops?
I usually dry hop with roughly 2 to 4 grams per litre for 5 days then add more for another 4 days at same rate. Hope that helps.

 

[dannymars]

Get yourself an auto-siphon and clamp the cane onto the side of the fermenter so the tip is above the trub.... don't bother with a secondary... that's an unnecessary step of possible oxidation (the enemy of hoppy beers)... My latest XPA with similar dry hop amounts is clear as a bell with only primary, dry hop then cold crash and straight into the (Co2 purged) keg.

 

[Phoney]

Tilt your fermenter so that the trub and hop material settles away from your tap. No need for secondary or racking canes.

 

[mofox1]

I usually dry hop in my primary fermenter. Wait till my pre determined dry hop days have been reached, cold crash then rack to a secondary for bulk
priming.
I have never bothered racking to a secondary seems kinda pointless to me. Do you bulk prime or just use drops?
I usually dry hop with roughly 2 to 4 grams per litre for 5 days then add more for another 4 days at same rate. Hope that helps.

Keg - bottles get the leftovers. There's only 21L in the fermenter so I there will not be left overs this time! Hops & trub... expecting to keg about 17 - 18L at best with this amount of dry hopping. My hoppy beers normally get 5 to 8 g/L which is about on par with yours, and there is about at least 2-3L of yeast/trub/hop material in the bottom. Expecting to "loose" more with this batch.

Get yourself an auto-siphon and clamp the cane onto the side of the fermenter so the tip is above the trub.... don't bother with a secondary... that's an unnecessary step of possible oxidation (the enemy of hoppy beers)... My latest XPA with similar dry hop amounts is clear as a bell with only primary, dry hop then cold crash and straight into the (Co2 purged) keg.

Indeed... been looking at siphon thingies for those occasions when the trub or hops go over the tap.

Tilt your fermenter so that the trub and hop material settles away from your tap. No need for secondary or racking canes.

It already is! Currently sitting on a piece of timber wedged underneath to get the yeast cake to settle on the other side.

Last batch was 100g dry hop, and the hop material was about 1 - 2cm thick on top of the yeast cake. Going 300g sounds like at least 6cm of hop material... I think I'll need a bigger wedge! (?). The reason for suggesting the use of a secondary for dry hopping is that you effectively gain the yeast cake volume under the tap.

 

[kaiserben]

13g/L - is that a pretty normal amount these days?

I've been at ~6g/L and have been underwhelmed with the aroma I've been getting.

Just to see if it might improve things I transferred 1 batch to secondary before dry hopping and there was noticeably more aroma than other batches.

All my dry hops have been single additions at 3 days before packaging. I'm wondering if doing multiple additions (using the same total amount, ie splitting my 6g/L addition into 2 x 3g/L additions at, say, 5 days and 3 days before bottling) would make a difference?

EDIT: Edited out quote that was irrelevant to what I've said.

 

[mofox1]

I just saw those rather of topic posts in the gf thread... Didn't think to look there!

At what point did you do the secondary transfer? I've only ever done a transfer once, and that was for bulk priming, so obviously ferment was well and truly finished.

 

[mofox1]

And no, 13g/L (at least for me) is not the new normal... This is just a big eff off IPA in the spirit of a Pliny clone.

Edit: spellink.

 

[kaiserben]

At what point did you do the secondary transfer?

14 days in primary, then into secondary with the dry hops and leave for 3 more days (and then another transfer to bulk-primed bottling bucket).

 

[Coodgee]

For 14 days in primary, How long do your beers take to reach fg? I find with an appropriate size starter i often reach f.g in 3 or 4 days. Us05 often takes more like 5 to 7 days.

 

[mofox1]

I find with an appropriate size starter i often reach f.g in 3 or 4 days. Us05 often takes more like 5 to 7 days.

What sort of OG's are we talking Coodgee?

Most of mine are > 1.056, and I don't think any of my brews have ever finished that quick... perhaps I ferment too cool?

For the IPA that is going now, I think I pitched on Wednesday night (maybe Thursday - will have to check notes). Starting SG was 1.074, expected FG is around the 1.010 mark. After a 1.5 days it was around 1.050, and at 4 days was 1.030. This was after vigorously stirring the wort in fermenter with a power drill + paint stirrer for 2 mins (stopped because foam was approaching the top of the fermenter) and pitching a very active 3L Greenbelt starter that was blowing it's load on the stir plate. Pitched at 18deg, bumped to 20 at 0.5deg increments between day 3 and 4.

Other than going O2 or raising my pitching temps I think the only other (reasonable?) way to decrease ferment time would be to pitch a huge amount of yeast - ie dump it on full yeast cake from a previous batch.

What pitching / fermenting process do you use?

 

[kaiserben]

For 14 days in primary, How long do your beers take to reach fg? I find with an appropriate size starter i often reach f.g in 3 or 4 days. Us05 often takes more like 5 to 7 days.

I generally don't try to rush through a ferment, believing there is benefit for the beer to allow the yeast to clean up after itself etc.

So I don't even bother checking till 14 days, at same time that I dry hop. If all seems okay I'll check again 3 days later. If that's okay again then I'll bottle it.

 

[Coodgee]

What sort of OG's are we talking Coodgee?

Most of mine are > 1.056, and I don't think any of my brews have ever finished that quick... perhaps I ferment too cool?

For the IPA that is going now, I think I pitched on Wednesday night (maybe Thursday - will have to check notes). Starting SG was 1.074, expected FG is around the 1.010 mark. After a 1.5 days it was around 1.050, and at 4 days was 1.030. This was after vigorously stirring the wort in fermenter with a power drill + paint stirrer for 2 mins (stopped because foam was approaching the top of the fermenter) and pitching a very active 3L Greenbelt starter that was blowing it's load on the stir plate. Pitched at 18deg, bumped to 20 at 0.5deg increments between day 3 and 4.

Other than going O2 or raising my pitching temps I think the only other (reasonable?) way to decrease ferment time would be to pitch a huge amount of yeast - ie dump it on full yeast cake from a previous batch.

What pitching / fermenting process do you use?

yeah if you are brewing high gravity beers it would obviously take significantly longer. I didn't think of that! The Rye IPA I brewed on Saturday was 1053 OG. It was actually down to 1014 which was the predicted FG after only 48 hours. This was with WY1217 which is a notoriously fast yeast. It was the first time i had used it and I love it! That was fermented at 19 degrees. I aerate by pumping out of my grainfather into the fermenter so the end of the outlet pipe rests on top of the inside of the handle of the plastic fermenter so I get two streams fanning down either side of the handle. I pump it out really slowly so it is more like a trickle. But by doing this you get a lot of surface area exposed to the air which should provide for a very good rate of oxygen disolved in the wort.

I've had similar results with WY1968 (3 days) and WY2112 (4 days fermented at 14 degrees). All around 1050 but finishing fairly high at 1012-1014 (I like a malty beer!).

One tip I picked up from Mr malty was to not wait until your starter had fully attenuated but pitch after 12-18 hours at high Krausen.

Your process is probably as good as mine, the only difference is probably OG

 

[mofox1]

Gotta get me some WY1217...

 

[mofox1]

I generally don't try to rush through a ferment, believing there is benefit for the beer to allow the yeast to clean up after itself etc.

So I don't even bother checking till 14 days, at same time that I dry hop. If all seems okay I'll check again 3 days later. If that's okay again then I'll bottle it.

Good practice. Certainly can't hurt.

 

[Killer Brew]

Gotta get me some WY1217...

Haven't used it before but have some on the way now for an American IPA. Noticed that it is only a seasonal release so will farm some of the starter to keep in the fridge.

 

[jeremy]

Another option for you.

I bought myself a large hop ball for my last Pale Ale and suspended it from the top of the keg. With 25g in it it was only about a quarter full, but obviously 100% full it probably wouldn't work as well.



Lazy but effective!

 

[Coodgee]

I do the same with a hop bag. Highly effective and better than dry hopping in the fermenter as it locks in all the aroma with no chance of oxidation. I read an article talking about how keg hopping was the only way to replicate a commercial dry hopping process.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

NEcro this.

Had a large expansion of hops around a sediment reducing tap that blocked completely. In a panic (I don't do this normally, of course), I racked it to secondary, using a sterilised spoon to keep the hop away from the tap (so it didn't block up) and tilting the fermenting.

Upshot is, I left most the hops in the fermenter (phew), but am worried about:

1. Oxygenation (though as a swap beer it should be drunk quickly) and;
2. The fact that the bottles are as hazy as a Tassie winter's morning.

Will this ruin a beer made for other beer nerds and will this haziness settle down as it carbonates and conditions. I normally am very meticulous with my process and hate serving sub standard beer.

As a side point, I bottled another beer, same yeast, but no hops in the fermenter (of course) and it's starting to clear already, it just looks 'normal' hazy.

 

[VanDrago]

I'm a fan of keeping things simple, mostly because I'm lazy. So normally all my dry hopping is done straight in the fermenter, usually when the beer has reached/almost reached FG and then left for a week. Then I'll CC, if doing that, or skip straight to kegging/bottling.

Current IPA is going to get a fairly decent dry hop dosage - around 13g/L. In a bit of an oversight, there is no sediment reducer on this fermentor (which I've found works well enough to reduce the amount of hop material pulled out if you are being careful).

So with around 300g of dry hops (pellets) going into the fermentor, I'm wondering if I should bother transferring to a secondary for dry hopping. Or something else. One of the HBT threads mentions a hop bag weighted down with a shot glass... I guess this could be done in primary or secondary.

What have folks here done when using largish dry hop rates? What has and (maybe more importantly) what hasn't worked?

If you don't transfer to secondary fermentor you are risking yeast autolysis which produce off-flavours. When you transfer from primary to secondary right after FG is reached you can then harvest your yeast for another brew.