Strategies for a bottler who skips secondary fermenting

[BrewFrenzy]

This weekend, I'm planning to bottle my first two brews that didn't use a secondary (a bitter and a porter) . They will have been in the primaries for 22 days. I plan to move the carboys into place the day before to allow post-move settling and I will use an auto siphon into a bottling bucket. Some questions...

1) Should I try to do any filtering? I have a fairly fine metal sieve or I could boil a nylon hop bag. I like the idea but it sounds tricky to pull off cleanly.

2) Should you always use a secondary if dry hopping? There's a lot of debate about this. My porter and bitter have NOT been dry hopped but I have two other brews in primary that I'd like to dry hop.

[PseudoChef]

I bottled for two years and never used a secondary. The thing to keep in mind is that you don't need every single drop of beer out of the primary. I would just position the tip of the auto-siphon about an inch or so above the trub layer in the carboy and rack on top of my priming sugar in the bottling bucket - no filter or sieve or anything.

I don't know much about secondary and dry hopping, but I don't think it would be bad to dry hop in primary.

[JSKC]

I usually try to cold crash my primary before bottling, which seems to help even if you rouse the yeast a bit while moving it to where you plan on bottling. I also recently dry-hopped in the primary with whole leaf hops and no hop bag. When I cold crashed the hops made a nice layer on the yeast cake and acted somewhat like a filter. I only have done this once, but I ended up with a real clean siphon.

[beltbuckle]

I don't bottle, but I stopped secondary-ing since I think it works fine and I am lazy and want to avoid another opportunity for infection and oxidation.

When dry hopping, I just pull the air lock off, drop my hop pellets in, and put a new sanitized airlock back on. I come back in 4-7 days to transfer to keg after cold crashing. PseudoChef is right - don't try to pull every last drop of beer out of there, stay well above the layer of trub at the bottom and your beer will thank you for it.

[TheDarkSide]

My autosiphon filters out enough of the trub. No need to secondary to dry hop. Just did the Green Flash clone, and dry hopped in primary after 7 days per Nathan and it turned out great.

[Mylo]

I also dry hop in my primary after fermentation is done, and some yeast have had a chance to drop. I "free ball" the pellets right in. After the dry hop period is finished, I crash cool to 40, and leave it for a day or so. The trub and hops tend to harden up at the bottom. It would take a few pokes with the racking cane to stir them up again - so I just pay good attention to where the end of the cane is, so that I don't disturb it. Recently, however, I have been doing more dry hopping in the keg with a weighted sack and some dental floss.


Mylo

[hopshead]

Like Mylo, I dry hop in the primary, after the major fermentation has subsided (read: after a week). Like Mylo, I also "free balled" the hop pellets. But I just try a new way to dry hop, "tea baggin'." I have pictures and an explanation on my blog:
http://hopshead.blogspot.com/2009/09/dr ... fuser.html

[Sent From My iPhone]

I also dry hop in my primary after fermentation is done, and some yeast have had a chance to drop. I "free ball" the pellets right in. After the dry hop period is finished, I crash cool to 40, and leave it for a day or so. The trub and hops tend to harden up at the bottom. It would take a few pokes with the racking cane to stir them up again - so I just pay good attention to where the end of the cane is, so that I don't disturb it. Recently, however, I have been doing more dry hopping in the keg with a weighted sack and some dental floss.


Mylo

hehe, you said "free ball", "finished", "harden", "bottom"' "pokes", and "sack"

But seriously, I free ball my hops when primary is almost finished and the yeast cake/hop layer tends to harden on the bottom, and I avoid pokes with my racking cane, no hop sack required.