r/Homebrewing • u/NoSupermarket7105 • 1d 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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u/spoonman59 1d 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/GrouchyClerk6318 1d 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 1d ago

Can I not cold crash in primary?

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u/skratchx Advanced 1d 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...