Anyone else have a problem with US-05 just hanging out at the top of your beer like an unwelcome house guest? I gently swirl the carboy a little and I see a little bit of it dropping but there is still about 2 inches of krausen 9 days after pitching. I need to dryhop it this weekend and I want to see if anyone see any issues with the following choices?
- Drop the hops right on top of the krausen and hope they are heavy enough to push through the yeast into the beer
- Rack to secondary from underneath the krausen and dry hop in secondary
- Cold crash till the yeast drops, bring it back up to 60’s to dry hop for a week, then cold crash again.
You are at FG? If not, wait until you are.
Cold crashing will effectively drop the krausen, but like I said, make sure the beer is at FG first.
I haven’t taken a gravity reading yet but definitely won’t cold crash it until I know for sure it’s finished.
Anybody see any issue in cold crashing mulitple times (once to drop the yeast and another time to drop the hops)?
This is a very common occurance with the 05.
If it were me, I would just rack to a secondary. The case has been made by several brewers on this forum that this is preferable for dry hopping anyway.
Another option is to wait the 5-6 days before you dry hop and make a decision then.
If the beer is finished then just add your hops to the primary if you like. I do sometimes.
I much prefer the results I get from racking to second for dry hopping.
3 to 4 weeks primary then 1 to 2 weeks dry hopping depending on the temp. and the taste of the beer.
[quote=“mattnaik”]I haven’t taken a gravity reading yet but definitely won’t cold crash it until I know for sure it’s finished.
Anybody see any issue in cold crashing mulitple times (once to drop the yeast and another time to drop the hops)?[/quote]
Why would you warm it up in between those? It will dry hop fine at cold temps, though you might want to leave the hops in there longer. That said, I don’t see any real problem with a double cold crash if you want to do it that way.
No other reason than to get it to bottle faster. The sooner I get it out of the chest freezer, the sooner I get to brew again 
It looks like you are brewing the Dead Ringer. I am doing a very similar batch right now. I used 2 packs of US-05 and at 68 degrees it took almost 2 weeks before all of the krausen dropped. I racked onto the hops in the secondary. The hops will fall on their own before my two week dry hop target.
This is the 3rd or 4th time I have made some variation of this recipe and this is a pretty typical time frame. So two week primary then racked and dry hopped for two weeks. It is a great recipe and I don’t want to rush the results.
The US-05 on my Dead Ringer stayed floating until the end. I dry hopped on the ominous-looking yeast rafts (thought mold at first) and it turned out fine. Yeast clumps were hanging out on top at bottling time. Siphoned under them and the beer turned out very good and very clear. Same thing happened with my next brew. Still was OK.
I use 05 almost exclusively and I always warm it up for the second week. That seems to help a lot. I ferment it at 58-62 for a week and then finish for a week at 68-72.
This is what I did and also kinda gently swirled it every day during that second week and by the end of the second week it had all dropped.
