Dry Hopping on to Krausen?

[Brewmetheus]

Hey All, fifth brew and my first dry hop.

I used a recipe from the Grainfather website called mister simcoe, it called for 150g of Simcoe at day five... My brew had a very thick Krausen and I just dumped them on top as the recipe wasn't explicit about it.

Is this ok or should I have waited?

I figured adding now wouldn't be too bad since should a contaminant be introduced it would be stopped by the active yeast and it should settle out eventually. No stirring either.

 

[cswis86]

Personally I would have waited until the krausen fell but you'll be ok. You don't need to worry much about contaminating you beer when dry hopping. The pH, alcohol content, and hops in the finished beer all act to prevent other microbes from growing. That doesn't mean you can be careless though... You still need to sanitize anything that comes in contact with you beer.

 

[NHBrews]

You should be fine. I just brewed an Northeast IPA and added the dry hops on day 3 (about 75% of the way through fermentation). Some yeasts have the ability to biotransform hop compounds which will change the dry hop profile in the beer. So you could end up with a different profile if fermentation was still active than if you waited.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

Theres no clear cut answer for dry hopping,
Some say dry hopping during the end of fermentation is better some say not....It used to be 10 to 14 day dryhop now its 3 to 4....I've dry hopped at all different times...All dry hopping does is add flavor to your beer
You cant "mess up a beer" dry hopping
You will be perfectly fine....no worries

 

[BrewerBrad82]

I agree that there is no cut and dry method. As mentioned above, adding hops at high krausen will allow the yeast to biotransform some of the oils present in the hops and you can get very different aromas than what the hops themselves smell like right out of the bag. Personally, I like to wait until just before terminal gravity is reached and then add the dry hops. By dry hopping when there is still a little bit of yeast activity, and oxygen introduced by dumping the hops in will be consumed by the active yeast cells as to prevent any accidental oxidation.