When to go to secondary?

[Ozwald]

I've heard it suggested several times to dry hop in the primary, but I also heard Tasty mention on an episode of CYBI that if you dry hop in the primary, you may as well throw your hops away, as the yeast will absorb all the hop flavor.

AFAIK yeast don't 'absorb' hop flavor. I believe what you're thinking of is dry hopping too early where the CO2 being produced by fermentation can scrub some of the hop aroma out of your beer. The trick is to dry hop just before primary is done when CO2 production falls, but there's still enough turbulence to keep them moving in solution for best utilization. Any time after that is fine as well, but the utilization will fall slightly as the beer becomes completely still.

[siwelwerd]

I've heard it suggested several times to dry hop in the primary, but I also heard Tasty mention on an episode of CYBI that if you dry hop in the primary, you may as well throw your hops away, as the yeast will absorb all the hop flavor.

Either he's wrong or you misunderstood (my money is on the latter). Don't toss them in at the beginning, but if you wait until all visible signs of fermentation have subsided then you do get the usual dry hop flavor/aroma.

[adamK]

I was also of the understanding that you should add them late, but when there was still enough activity from the yeast activity to push out the oxygen introduced from the addition, but not so early that you scrub out the aromatics from the hops.

[brewinhard]

I've heard it suggested several times to dry hop in the primary, but I also heard Tasty mention on an episode of CYBI that if you dry hop in the primary, you may as well throw your hops away, as the yeast will absorb all the hop flavor.

AFAIK yeast don't 'absorb' hop flavor. I believe what you're thinking of is dry hopping too early where the CO2 being produced by fermentation can scrub some of the hop aroma out of your beer. The trick is to dry hop just before primary is done when CO2 production falls, but there's still enough turbulence to keep them moving in solution for best utilization. Any time after that is fine as well, but the utilization will fall slightly as the beer becomes completely still.

I think that yeast cells may be able to actual adsorb some of the hop oils in suspension and when the yeast drop out, they can carry some of those oils to the bottom of the fermenter instead of leaving them in your finished product. With that being said, I have never noticed a serious depletion of hop oils when dry hopping in primary.

[skibikejunkie]

Thanks for the insights.