How long should I wait?

I brewed the Jasper's DFH 90 Min Extract Clone this past Sunday. Everything went great, and the fermentation has been bubbling great. 5 days in and the blowoff tube is still bubbling (maybe once every 30 seconds or so).

The OG was 1.091. This is the biggest beer I've made so far. I don't plan on moving to a secondary, but I do plan on dry-hopping, cold crashing and kegging. I've done this all in the past, but not with a beer this big.

The kit instructions say the total time is 8 weeks from brew to bottle. If this is the case, at what point should I dry-hop? After dry-hopping, I'm thinking of waiting 5 days and then cold crash for 2-3 days and then keg. Just trying to figure out a time frame.

FYI - I know not to do anything until the hydrometer returns a constant reading for 3 days.

I usually wait after the krausen completely drops and I hit terminal gravity or close. I try to dry hop for 7-10 days to avoid grass flavors from extended time on the hops. So I'll drop them in around 5 days before I crash cool and gelatin. Crash and gel for 3-4 days then bottle.

The time it takes to get there all depends on heat, yeast pitching rate, oxygen when pitching, etc.

Working with microorganisms and a calendar is impossible. Temperature of the fermentation will be a big factor in the time from pitching to bottles too. If you pitch the yeast into wort that is at the low end of the yeast's preferred range or slightly below it, leaving the beer at that temp until the fast part of the ferment is over, then warming it to room temperature will give you good flavored beer with less time than if you have it at a constant temperature but you still need time for the big beer to complete the ferment before you dry hop. It won't hurt and it might help quite a bit to give it even more time than just what it takes to get to final gravity too.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I'm kegging this brew, so no bottle conditioning. How will this affect my timeline?

dierythmus said:

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I'm kegging this brew, so no bottle conditioning. How will this affect my timeline?

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Eight weeks sounds about right for that big of beer. I would probably dry hop a week before kegging. You can even dry hop in the keg if you want.

BansheeRider said:

Eight weeks sounds about right for that big of beer. I would probably dry hop a week before kegging. You can even dry hop in the keg if you want.

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I love the sig! Too true...

I gave BansheeRider a like just for that sig. yes so true

grem135 said:

I gave BansheeRider a like just for that sig. yes so true

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Damn was my suggestion for dry hopping that bad???

Did you say something about dry hopping? sorry guess I missed that. i have yet to dry hop anything.