Dry Hopping in Secondary - Question on Temps

I don't know if many people actually raise the temp above fermentation temp for dry hopping. But in general, less contact time is needed at warm (room-ish) temps than at cold (like lagering/kegging carbonation) temps. I don't think there's a right or wrong way to do this.

 

I personally would not make the effort to relocate the beer; a dry hop conditioning temperature of 66 degrees should work just fine.

Cheers!

 

I'm dry hopping a IIPA at room temps now and it is going to the kegerator this weekend. I'll let you know if it ever changes over to vegetal, but I'm hoping not.

 

Keep in mind that at higher temps, you wouldn't leave the hops in as long, so it could be a wash. But I really don't know if extraction of vegetal flavors is accelerated by higher temps at more, the same, or less than the acceleration of extraction of the desirable compounds.

 

Probably about 60 give or take a couple degrees. Took a sample last night and tastes phenomenal two days in

 

ultimately I would say no, don't raise your temps. Your not going to greatly speed up the process by doing so, talking with Thomas Shellhammer at Oregon State U, he said he dry hops his beers for only 24hrs. And if anything, many craft brewers would actually cool their ales before starting dry hopping, but that is more for yeast flocculation purposes. If it was a lager, then yes, raising temps up a few degrees maybe warranted, but not for ales.
Not a whole lot addressing this specific topic, but here is a recent article which somewhat touches on the subject

 

It sounds like you are seeing churning, rather than just some CO2 gassing off. If so, that's yeast activity, which indicates that fermentation wasn't finished when you added the hops.

 

Man, I thought I kept my house cold.

 

Haha, It is a finished basement only fire up the heat if need be.

 

My new method that has given me the best hop character I've ever had is to:

1. Cold condition the primary fermenter mid 30s F for 3 days
2. Rack to keg with shortened dip tube (2'' cut off) on top of dry hops. I add hops, close, flush with CO2, rack via auto siphon to keg through the outpost disconnect to reduce oxygen pickup.
3. Start dry hop at 60 F then reduce temp by 5 F a day until 35 F then hold 2 days and jump to serving keg.
4. During dry hop keep head pressure ~2 psi CO2 on gas in.

 

That's odd. I doubt if it was 'too warm' for the yeast: yeast tend to become more active at higher temps. It's definitely strange to drop six gravity points after 5 days of holding at 1.016. I would continue to take readings for a while: if it continues to drop, you might have a bug in there. What yeast was it, anyway?

 

Hmmm ... I've not used that yeast, but I understand it's kind of medium attenuator, so it would probably be expected that it would slow down or stop somewhere around 1.016. I would think that it's not normal for it to perk up again and go all the way down to 1.010, but perhaps some others who've used this yeast can speak to that?

It's hard to say without knowing all the details, but given that you were apparently expecting an FG of about 1.016, I would be wary of a possible infection now that it's gone down six more points. Take a reading, and take a taste. It's probably fine, but just make sure gravity is not still dropping before you bottle.