Dry hopping into cold crashed beer

[Zenmeister]

I like to cold crash my beer before I do my dry hop addition. This is because I harvest the yeast, and don't like the vegetative matter fouling up the collected yeast. So, I've been cold crashing it, (which is great for getting most of the yeast to drop out of suspension and fall to the bottom of the fermenter) and after getting all the yeast I want to collect, I then add the hops.
My question is, in doing this am I sacrificing much of the flavor of the hops that I want to impart to the beer? Thoughts?

 

[pvtpublic]

No, but you're running the risk of oxidation. It's a double edged sword whether to wait until the fermentation is winding down, or until the yeast is gone. But in your case, its a no brainer. It's not so much the vegative matter that's the issue with collecting yeast, though, as it is the oils from the hops coating the yeast cells that hinder them.

You're probably imparting a marginally increased amount of flavor/aroma due to not having it blown out the airlock.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

My question is, in doing this am I sacrificing much of the flavor of the hops that I want to impart to the beer? Thoughts?

I found that when dry hopping cold (I have tried as low as 40F) the hops will tend to just drop to the bottom and I don't get as much flavor as I want. Commercial breweries (and some homebrewers) get around this by rousing the hops. This is often done with blasts of CO2. On a homebrew scale, if you have already dropped out the trub and yeast, you could shake the fermenter to rouse the hops.

I often dry hop at fermentation temp, but I do tend to think that with large dry hop additions at warm temps, you are more likely to get harsh bitter character. With my last batch of NEIPA, I cold crashed to drop out yeast (I cannot dump with my fermenter) then warmed it up to 60F for the dry hops. I am pretty happy with the hop character in that one.