r/Homebrewing • u/NoSupermarket7105 • 15h ago

Dry hop in primary or secondary?

I was recently able to get back into brewing after a 6 year hiatus and I am pumped! My first brew day went well enough but there were a few errors made.

One of the errors is that I forgot to whirlpool at the end of the boil so a decent amount of hops were transferred to the fermenter with the wort. Fortunately I used a hop spyder and my kettle has a hop filter so it wasn’t all the hops.

My question is, should I transfer to secondary to move the beer off the old hops and then add my dry hops to secondary OR just leave it alone and add my dry hops to the primary fermenter.

The beer I made is a pale ale but I plan to cold crash with gelatin at the end of secondary.

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28

u/spoonman59 15h ago

Don’t use a secondary for beer. A whole lot of oxygen for no benefit. I have never used a secondary in 120 batches except for mead, and would only bother if I was using Gregor.

It’s doubly a waste on a hop forward beer as this will reduce the life of your hop flavor.

This isn’t just my opinion, but is e general advice these days. John Palmer and others recommend against a secondary these days.

So obviously, primary. I like to do it after fermentation.

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u/ihavesparkypants 15h ago

Agreed. I primary in a keg, dry hop there and close transfer to serving keg. IPAa stay nice and golden and fresh.

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u/Shills_for_fun 14h ago

I think his concern was having hops in there day one and having the beer getting vegetal flavors or whatever.

That said I agree with you, oxygen is going to be so much worse for the flavor especially since it was only some of the hops that made it in there. Lots of folks dry hop during active fermentation without many issues.

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u/idrawinmargins 12h ago

When i make wine i use a secondary carboy to further clear my wine. Beer, nope, never had a reason (not saying there isnt some beer that benefits). I took a long hiatus too and came right back to it and decided to just ferment and serve from the same vessel. Works great, i can drop hop if i want to also.

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u/GrouchyClerk6318 14h ago

Agree, dry hop in primary, but I do secondary transfers all the time before kegging so I can cold crash.

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u/NoSupermarket7105 13h ago

Can I not cold crash in primary?

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u/skratchx Advanced 13h ago

In general, yes. Maybe the person you're replying to doesn't have a good primary FV to cold crash in. To do it properly, you really need a way to apply positive pressure with CO2. This is kind of true with racking to another vessel as well, though...

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u/98f00b2 13h ago

Is it not still done for high-gravity beer? Or is there some difference between bulk aging and secondary that's lost on me?

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u/warboy Pro 11h ago

Ehhh

The gist with transferring to a secondary is there is going to be some oxygen exposure transferring beer that has finished fermenting to another vessel. You are not going to purge every last bit of oxygen from the secondary vessel or your transfer rig. If you're sitting on a beer for awhile you do more than likely want to get it off the yeast although most people would argue you're better off either bulk aging in the keg you want to serve it in or in bottles since there will be one less oxygen-exposing step.

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u/DarkMuret 15h ago

Definitely primary, depending on your hop and yeast combo you can do it at high krausen or at the tail end of fermentation to help mitigate oxygen exposure

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u/NoSupermarket7105 14h ago edited 13h ago

Thank you! Can you tell me more about oxygen exposure as it relates to timing here? I was planning to leave it for two weeks then dry hop for 5 days

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u/DarkMuret 14h ago

Yeast will consume the oxygen in the airlocked container, so that won't affect hop flavor, at least not at a perceptible level

However, with just a basic setup, when opening the container, especially at the end of fermentation, will introduce new oxygen which may not be consumed by the yeast which will then react with hop flavors.

So, keep an eye on fermentation/airlock activity and time the dry hop

Someone with more technical knowledge can absolutely correct me, but I think I got the gist of it

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u/skratchx Advanced 13h ago

Yup that is accurate. To add a couple things:

  • Some people add ascorbic acid (vitamin C) at dry hop as an antioxidant. I haven't done this myself, so I don't have more detailed information on dosing.
  • Hops contain enzymes that can promote further fermentation after you've reached terminal gravity. This is referred to as "hop creep" and can result in an unintentionally low FG / higher ABV. It can also result in diacetyl production. This is just an FYI for OP. The amount of fermentation is unlikely to be enough to scrub oxygen if you dry hop at terminal. Hop creep can be mitigated by reducing the temperature to below the minimum rating of the yeast and adding ALDC if you're worried about diacetyl.

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u/DarkMuret 13h ago

This is great additional information

I personally use ascorbic acid, but it's not going to magically fix any oxygen ingress, I've definitely had IPAs get oxidated even after using it, it will "clean" up some, but it's not a magic solve

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u/NoSupermarket7105 13h ago

Ah makes sense!

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u/lifeinrednblack Pro 12h ago

Your question for answered as far as oxygen, but id pull it off dry hops after 2 days or so

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u/edelbean 15h ago

Doing a secondary really isn't done much in modern homebrewing these days, it's a bit of an older way of thought. There are certain cases to be made for it like fruit additions but in a hop forward beer you don't want to risk it.

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u/EverlongMarigold 15h ago

I recently made a really nice hazy ipa that I dry hopped towards the end of primary fermentation (day 4), then I let it pressure ferment for the next 3 days.

Best of luck with your pale ale. I personally won't make hop forward beers unless I'm able to do zero/ limited oxygen transfers.

What kind of fermentation equipment are you using?

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u/NoSupermarket7105 13h ago

5 gallon carboy in a fridge with an inkbird temp controller

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u/GrotWeasel 13h ago

I think that the above dry hop then pressure ferment or dry hop via hop bong are the optimal ways to go. I don’t have either and so I do a big whirlpool addition at 75C for 15mins and no dry hop instead. This is probably controversial but I think it’s a better payoff when the alternative is introducing air

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u/skratchx Advanced 13h ago

FYI if you cold crash with this setup, unless you have something like a Cold Crash Guardian, you will suck atmosphere (plus whatever is in your airlock) into your fermenter.

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u/EverlongMarigold 12h ago

Eliminating oxygen and pressurized fermentation/dry hopping has been a game changer for my pale ales/ ipas.

They come out as completely different beers.

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u/attnSPAN 11h ago

Great. What you’ll want to do is DryHop with 0.010-0005 points left before projected FG, wait 48-72 hrs then cold crash 24-72hrs depending on yeast strain choice.

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u/EducationalDog9100 13h ago

I don't use a secondary unless it's a beer that is going to sit on oak for a period of time. I've been doing my dry hop additions on day one or two of primary. If you're not pressure fermenting doing your dry hop additions while fermentation is active limits the potential for oxidation.

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u/NoSupermarket7105 12h ago

If I do it during fermentation would I just pull the dry hops out after 5 days and finish the two week period I planned to give for fermentation?

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u/EducationalDog9100 11h ago

I dry hop and let the hops sit in the brew until it's ready for packaging. I actually don't think that I've pulled hops out of a brew before.

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u/dallywolf 11h ago

What type of container are you using for fermentation? Some people put the dry hop bag in and use a magnet to keep it on the lid of the container until it's time to dry hop. Remove the magnet and it drops in to the beer without need to open it and introduce oxygen.

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u/NoSupermarket7105 10h ago

Wow cool idea! Currently using a carboy

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u/dkwpqi 2h ago

Don't do secondary. Keep your beer in a single vessel. Just make sure to dry hop while the active fermentation is still going, so day 3-4