After surveying questions related to dry hopping and secondary here on the Exchange, I don't yet have solid answers to the following questions.
- Should beer be transferred to secondary for the purpose of dry hopping? If so, why?
- How long after primary should the beer be transferred to secondary?
- Regardless of secondary, how long should the beer be on the hops before bottling/kegging?
The context is that I have an IPA that I plan to dry hop, which is a technique I've never done before. The beer is a Stone IPA clone based on this recipe, and it is now at the 1 week mark of fermentation. It's a 5gal batch (closer to 4.5) and I have about 2.25 ounces of whole-leaf hops (Centennial, Amarillo and Cascade) that I plan to use. The secondary vessel would be a 5gal glass carboy.
I've read related posts about whether or not to secondary, and I agree that secondary is generally unnecessary. However, my source recipe implies secondary, and that matches my general understanding: get the beer off the trub before dry hopping. But I haven't yet got a clear answer about it. I am listening to the Brew Strong episode about dry hopping right now but I may not have the patience for a 90+ minute podcast to get my answer; besides, text is much easier as a reference.