Cheers to all, I am a rookie brewer, who has just plunged in 1 oz of Citra hop pellets into my 5 gallon primary fermenter after 9 days of fermentation. I have purchased a secondary/bottling bucket, should I rack after 14 days and let age some more or should I move to bottling? Also, is the 1 oz of hops enough? I have been reading and it seems that 3-4 oz is the norm for a truly good IPA.
Many people, myself included, never rack to a secondary. Before you bottle you want to be done fermenting. Are you done? Have you checked the gravity with a hydrometer? For an IPA you'll want more hops. Three ounces dry hopped is a good target.
Typically, you would dry hop in the secondary, but I usually don't like to secondary and dry hop in the primary. My advice is in about a week, bottle it. As for amount, that is personal preference and recipe dependent. Knowing nothing of your recipe, it is a hard question to answer. I have dry hopped between 1 oz and 8 oz and enjoyed both beers.
As other have suggested, racking to secondary is just another chance to get oxygen or unwanted microbes into your beer. Especially for hoppy beer, the less exposure to oxygen, the fresher and longer lasting the hop aroma will be. For an IPA I usually use half my dry hops in primary, and half in the keg during serving (which I can flush with CO2 to minimize oxidation). 4-5 oz total. When bottling I'd go for about that amount in primary, but it depends on the variety, and how agressive you were with late boil additions.
I usually use 2 or 3 ounces for standard ipas. But a little citra goes a long way so I think 1 oz will be ok.
Thank you all for the comments. I feel a bit more comfortable now not racking to a secondary fermenter. Ill let sit for 5 days then bottle. @JSullivan - I did not take a hydrometer reading. Being my first brew I forgot to take the OG reading and had some issues with co2 in the air lock. (after a bit of research) I opened the lid after 6 days and there was a krausen top so I closed and added hops last night on the 9th day. I read that as long as the krausen top was there fermentation had taken place and I should be ok. I wanted to take a hydrometer reading but the only thing I have not purchased is a wine thief and do not have a turkey baster. I plan to take a reading on the 14th day. I assume from all the reading as long as its around 1.000 im good or am I grossly mistaken? Another question I have is once my 14th day arrives. Will the auto siphon to bottles allow a lot of flakes from yeast and hops get into beer? should I go get a filter or something or is that all part of the beauty of homebrewing? I have read that racking to secondary is a way to avoid a lot of the layer on the bottom, but most people here on the thread do not use a secondary. Looking forward to the 14th. Again Cheers!! I feel like a kid in a candy store just even talking about brewing my own beer.
I think the only thing you're "grossly mistaken" about is the FG. It won't be 1.000. If you're making a kit, it probably states what it will be, which is probably somewhere around 1.012. If it doesn't say, you can calculate it pretty easily using the expected OG and the yeast's attenuation rate. Also, FWIW, I would personally wait longer than the 14th day before bottling. The yeast are still working in there, even after the active phase of fermentation, cleaning up various byproducts. They can do this in the bottle conditioning phase, but it's my belief they do it better and quicker if you leave the beer on the yeast cake for at least a week after you reach FG. So my suggestion would be to add another 2 oz of dry hops and let it sit till the 21st day, then bottle. Hard to wait on that first beer, I know! But I think you'll be rewarded if you do.
“They can do this in the bottle conditioning phase, but it's my belief they do it better and quicker if you leave the beer on the yeast cake for at least a week after you reach FG” Is there any science behind your belief that bulk conditioning is ‘better’? It is my personal belief that conditioning is conditioning no matter where it occurs (fermenter vs. bottle) but I will offer up that I have no studies or white papers on this subject. Also, if you have a clean and healthy primary fermentation there should not be much to clean up (e.g., there should be low levels of acetaldehyde, low levels of diacetyl, etc.). Cheers!
There might be. Somewhere. But I couldn't tell you where. That's why I said "it is my belief." Now, why is it "my belief," you might well ask. So I might answer. I believe that exposure to the massive amount of yeast present in the yeast cake will result in a more efficient conditioning than exposure to the much smaller amount of yeast present during bottle conditioning.
“I believe that exposure to the massive amount of yeast present in the yeast cake will result in a more efficient conditioning than exposure to the much smaller amount of yeast present during bottle conditioning.” I think I have an understanding of what you are proposing in the above statement but from my perspective it is not the yeast cake which is performing the conditioning but the yeast that is still in suspension. I really do not think that the yeast on the bottom of the fermenter is really doing anything; those yeast cells are dormant to my understanding. Is there more yeast in suspension within a bulk container (i.e., the primary fermenter) vs. within the bottles on a per volume basis (i.e., yeast cells per cm3)? Boy, I really do not know. Also, the yeast in suspension within the bottle is ‘active’ in that it is performing a genuine secondary fermentation in metabolizing the priming sugar. I think it could be argued that active yeast in the bottle could condition more than non-active (non-fermenting) yeast. Cheers!
You got good answers to your questions here, so I won't repeat them. Based on the kinds of things you asked, I'd recommend reading John Palmer's 'How to Brew.' You can buy the printed book (current version), or read it free on-line (older version). It will answer your next 10 questions before you even know you were going to have them. www.howtobrew.com
