Beer Forum

Hey guys,

I am getting ready to brew a 10 gallon Citra based IPA that has dry hopping in the recipe. I also want to introduce cold crashing into my technique with this brew as well. My thought is to brew and ferment normally in the primary and then rack to a secondary on the dry hops. After the dry hop period (~10 days 2ozs. of hops) my thought is to cold crash to have the hops and other left over solids from my primary fall out. I am thinking of crashing at 35 degrees for 2-3 days.

Will this work?

I hope so. I just put 5gal of IPA in to cold crash before kegging to clear it up from all those dry hop pellets floaties. This is the first cold crash foray and only my second kegged batch. The gravity sample tasted amazing so if it does something odd I'm gonna be pissed.

My first questions is whether this being fermented in one vessel or split into carboys? Then there is always the point of if a secondary is even necessary, probably not, & dry hopping for 10 days seems a bit on the long side for just one addition. Luckily, cold crashing is a pretty straight forward routine and 2 days should be enough time to drop everything out of solution and acclimate your beer to kegging temp. I always cold crash my 10 gal. batches and typically wait the same period and end up with a very clear beer that conditions amazingly well in the keg. Hope this helped

i typically add the dry hops to the primary fermenter just as the fermentation starts to slow. Usually around day 6 or 7 or just after the krausen drops a bit. This allows the remainder of fermentation to push out any introduced oxygen and minimize oxidation.
I usually allow the dry hops to sit in the beer swirling the fermenter every other day anywhere from 5-7 days. I then switch out my 3 piece airlock for an s shaped one piece airlock to prevent "suck back" of any liquid in the airlock into the fermenter as the beer is being crash cooled and the pressure changes within the fermenter. I will cold crash for 2-3 days and then transfer to a keg.

AsthmaticBowl wrote:My first questions is whether this being fermented in one vessel or split into carboys? Then there is always the point of if a secondary is even necessary, probably not, & dry hopping for 10 days seems a bit on the long side for just one addition. Luckily, cold crashing is a pretty straight forward routine and 2 days should be enough time to drop everything out of solution and acclimate your beer to kegging temp. I always cold crash my 10 gal. batches and typically wait the same period and end up with a very clear beer that conditions amazingly well in the keg. Hope this helped

I will plait the batch into 2 five gallon carboys. I wanted to transfer to a secondary to get it off the yeast cake. I usually dry hop for a longer time period with less hops. It's seems to work good for me and less expensive than buying a lot of hops.

rossiski wrote:

AsthmaticBowl wrote:My first questions is whether this being fermented in one vessel or split into carboys? Then there is always the point of if a secondary is even necessary, probably not, & dry hopping for 10 days seems a bit on the long side for just one addition. Luckily, cold crashing is a pretty straight forward routine and 2 days should be enough time to drop everything out of solution and acclimate your beer to kegging temp. I always cold crash my 10 gal. batches and typically wait the same period and end up with a very clear beer that conditions amazingly well in the keg. Hope this helped

I will plait the batch into 2 five gallon carboys. I wanted to transfer to a secondary to get it off the yeast cake. I usually dry hop for a longer time period with less hops. It's seems to work good for me and less expensive than buying a lot of hops.

Again, transferring to a secondary for anything taking less than 3-4 weeks seems to be a personal preference and is not necessarily needed. It introduces possible aeration & contamination when the alternative of leaving it in the primary will not produce any off flavors in the beer. Whatever floats your boat