[ultravista]

I plan on brewing MoreBeer's Pliny the Elder clone tomorrow. Their recipe calls for 3 ounces of Columbus, 1 ounce of Centennial, and 1 ounce of Simcoe dry hopped.

To cut-down on wort transfer and oxygen pickup post-fermentation, can I dry hop on top of the yeast cake after final gravity is reached without any material losses?

From what I've read, most recipe calls for 'secondary' dry hopping.

Your thoughts?

[Stevie]

I dry hop this way, others do not. They say the yeast will pull out some hop character. While that may certainly be true, I am lazy and satisfied with my results.

[ultravista]

Steve - we're talking about 5 ounces dry hopped. I can't imaging flocc'd yeast would have a material impact. During fermentation, absolutely.

[Stevie]

Steve - we're talking about 5 ounces dry hopped. I can't imaging flocc'd yeast would have a material impact. During fermentation, absolutely.

Like I said, I've done it this way and I am happy enough with it. Others will disagree.

I've brewed the Pliny recipe from BYO and it calls for 7 ounces worth of dry hops. I added them to primary after 3 weeks in stages. Racking sucked and I clogged the dip tube on the keg. Cold crashing helps if you are using pellets.

[theDarkSide]

I've brewed the Pliny recipe several times and always dry hopped in the primary.  The first charge goes in at about day 4 and sits for 12 days and the second charge goes in about 7 days later and sits for 5 days.  I've always been able to get at least 5 gallons out at the end.

[ultravista]

I plan on:

* Fermenting @ 68 F until complete
* Dropping to 40 F until clear
* Raising the temperature back to ambient (approximately 60-65 F)
* Dry hopping for 7-14 days at ambient
* Transfer to keg and add gas

I suspect dry hopping while the yeast is still active is different than dry hopping on a compacted yeast cake.

Limiting exposure to oxygen is my primary concern. Transferring once makes sense.

The MoreBeer recipe includes 2 ounces of whole leaf Cascade. I plan on using this somewhere in the dry hop process (while in the keg) should flavor and aroma fade considerably. I'm the only one drinking this beer; it will be in the keg for a few months

[tonyccopeland]

Steve - we're talking about 5 ounces dry hopped. I can't imaging flocc'd yeast would have a material impact. During fermentation, absolutely.

Like I said, I've done it this way and I am happy enough with it. Others will disagree.

I've brewed the Pliny recipe from BYO and it calls for 7 ounces worth of dry hops. I added them to primary after 3 weeks in stages. Racking sucked and I clogged the dip tube on the keg. Cold crashing helps if you are using pellets.

Same here on clogging the dip tube/poppet with a Pliny kit... major PITA, even blowing co2 in the beverage out didn't help.  I now put a sanitized paint strainer bag in the destination keg, rack into the keg, and gently remove the bag which seems to help.

[tonyccopeland]

I plan on:

* Fermenting @ 68 F until complete
* Dropping to 40 F until clear
* Raising the temperature back to ambient (approximately 60-65 F)
* Dry hopping for 7-14 days at ambient
* Transfer to keg and add gas

I suspect dry hopping while the yeast is still active is different than dry hopping on a compacted yeast cake.

Limiting exposure to oxygen is my primary concern. Transferring once makes sense.

The MoreBeer recipe includes 2 ounces of whole leaf Cascade. I plan on using this somewhere in the dry hop process (while in the keg) should flavor and aroma fade considerably. I'm the only one drinking this beer; it will be in the keg for a few months

I know the whole leaf mash hops in the morebeer kit don't do much for the beer, but boy does it smell awesome in the mash.

[Tim Thomssen]

I make a beer like that, with an irresponsible amount of dry hops.  I also like to crash it to drop the yeast then do the dry hopping in a keg at ambient temperatures.  If you are using whole leaf hops, they can bring a lot of oxygen with them so I like to pressurize the dry hop keg with only the hops in there with CO2 and purge a few times before adding the beer.  After dry hopping for a few days in the keg, you can do a closed transfer by jumping over to another purged keg to serve from.

I've tried the multiple dry hop additions thing before, but just put them all in at once now.  I think that multiple additions work better on the commercial scale because of the volume of hops and fermenter geometry, imaging all those hops settling into the cone without much opportunity for contact with beer.  Much easier to rouse up the hops in a 5 gallon keg than it is a 30 barrel FV.

[HoosierBrew]

I make a beer like that, with an irresponsible amount of dry hops.  I also like to crash it to drop the yeast then do the dry hopping in a keg at ambient temperatures. 

Yep, that's pretty much my procedure, even down to the irresponsible use of dry hops !

[reverseapachemaster]

That is also my process now. I bottle, rather than keg, so I try to scoop up a little of the yeast off the top of the trub into the bottling bucket to ensure timely carbonation.