cold crashing and dry hop question?

[Pelican521]

Hi all, I just dry hopped my SN Torpedo clone last night and need to bottle next weekend.

I'm thinking I'll set my fermentor to 32 degrees on Friday night and bottle on Sunday. I know a few more days of cold crashing is ideal but I won't have the time since I need to bottle on Sunday.

I've never cold crashed a brew and was wondering if the cold temps would affect the extraction of hops during dry hopping and if I've built enough time in.

Or, should I just skip the cold crashing? I want to make sure I get some great hop aroma from the dry hopping.

Thx.

 

[prandlesc]

I have a couple of questions - what are you trying to accomplish with cold crashing? When did you brew this beer? When you say "next weekend" do you mean 3 days from now, or 10 days from now?

Cold crashing will help you get yeast out of suspension, but if you've held this in your fermenter for 3 0r 4 weeks, your yeast should already be settled. Cold crashing, at least in my experience, will not help clear hop residue. If you just dry hopped and are going to chill your beer in 3 days, you won't get much hop flavor and aroma - both the limited amount of time and the cold will have an effect. If you have a full week + until "next weekend" there should be enough time to extract much of the hop goodness and the couple of days of cold at the end shouldn't have much impact.

Better planning will help in the future - and if you get good at planning be sure and let me know how you did it; I still seem to be rushing something because I didn't plan well. My last adventure was kegging at 11:00 pm with my vacation flight leaving at 5:45 the next morning - and I knew weeks in advance. But I still had to try and get one more brew in!!

 

[user 108580]

^disagree with some of this.

You should be fine. I recently dry hopped an IPA for three days, cold crashed for one and the aroma is intense.

Mitch Steele's (stones head brewer) New book IPA suggests that maximum aroma is extracted from dry hopping after 3-5 days. I find I agree with this. I used to dry hop for 7-10 days but after switching to 3-5 the aroma has increased significantly.

And if you used pellet hops the cold crashing will clear the hops as well. At least it has for me every time. They sink right to the bottom.

 

[Schumed]

Here's my IPA schedule now and have several medals to back this up

1 week fermenter
5 days of dry hopping
3 days cold crash
bottle with 4.5oz priming sugar
I can crack them open in 5 days with great carb
Drink them with in 2-4 weeks after that they aren't as good

 

[Righlander]

i've had people tell me that dry hopping and cold crashing at the same time will dumb down the aroma. gonna have to call BS on that. i do it every time, and i've split batches and tried to notice the difference and couldn't tell.

 

[Pelican521]

I've been told that 5 days is the "sweet spot" for dry hopping as well. So figure, including last night and a half a day Sunday (when I bottle) it will be dry hopped for about 5.5 days. Also, FWIW, I used pellets and put them in a couple of hop sacks.

It's already been in the secondary for a week so I thought maybe a day or two to cold crash to help settle anything else out.

If I cold crash Friday night, It would be dry hopping for about 4 days at 68 degrees and then a day and a half at 32 degrees.

How does this sound?

 

[user 108580]

Sounds fine to me. Hope it tastes good!

 

[diS]

Depends how well hops are soaked but generally 5 days should be enough to dissolve hop oils.
I usually leave them 5-7 days and then cold crash, results never absent.