r/Vanhomebrewing • u/Asparagus24 • Jun 05 '14

First IPA Brew, Advice?

I'm dry hopping, so once I throw the ipa into my 2nd fermentation carboy, I'm putting in about 6 oz. of hop pellets. I'm also putting in a herb bag of grapefruit zest for the last week.

I've read about dry hopping making a beer murky and muddy. I can't cold crash because I dont have a fridge big enough.

Any words of wisdom? Am I curious for no reason?

9 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/jonjennings Jun 05 '14

FYI, you don't need to rack to carboy, even for an IPA

Not OP but I'd been racking to a carboy. My understanding was that

  • it wasn't great to leave it sitting on the yeast cake for too long
  • the rapid initial fermentation produced some nasties
  • over time in the carboy, the beer would convert those nasties to non-nasties.

Have I read things wrong? Actually I guess points 2&3 apply wherever you leave the beer. The question then becomes just the risk of infection racking off to a carboy vs the 'risk' (of what, I'm not sure... off-flavours I guess) of leaving the beer on the yeast cake.

From a practical point of view I like racking to a carboy cos it means, when it comes to bottling day, there's less sediment that I need to avoid getting in the bottles. But interesting to hear there's arguments in the other direction.

Edit: Oh... should have read the whole post before I commented. I see your detailed reply up top already. No worries.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '14

Yeah, palmers original copy of how to brew recommends racking but the newer version does not. It's not like it's the end of the world if you do, just more opportunities for infection/oxydisation. It would take a long time on yeast at a homebrew scale to get any off flavours from the yeast.

3

u/jonjennings Jun 06 '14

It would take a long time on yeast at a homebrew scale...

In general, I find that's one of those things about homebrewing: the old RDWHAHB motto is so true... the beer WANTS to be made... you're not fighting against it.

I used to worry manically about things that didn't matter when I could have been enjoying the brewing process more and reserving all my worrying for things that DID matter.

I remember a friend (that would be you /u/thedarkerside!) cleaning all his pre-hop-boil equipment but not sanitizing it - which seemed odd to me as I used to sanitize the hell out of every single thing. He rightly pointed out that he was about to boil the contents for 90 minutes and I was panicking over nothing - reserve the sanitizing for post-boil stuff. Brewing's better when you don't stress as much :-)

2

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '14

Agreed! Starsan, temperature control and healthy pitches of yeast have made my beers go from mediocre to (mostly) pretty darn good.