In Need of Dry Hop Method

[znichols]

Hey,
New, small production brewery planned to open in the midwest. We will have two fermenters and two brite tanks, and our two initial beer recipes require dry hopping. We'd like to try to keep the fermentation time and secondary time down to a week a piece so we can be brewing twice per week. Any suggestions for a good dry hopping strategy for this equipment on this time table?

Thanks geniuses!

-Zach

[BigWilley]

I like to dryhop just as the active fermentation is winding down. The hops get mixed well and the results are nice, but you probably dont want to pitch the resulting yeast. Also you have to be very careful when adding the hops that you dont get a nice beer/hop gyser! Antifoam is great to stop that. Otherwise, harvest as quick as possible and mix the hops with a pump or Carb stone to get a good mix.

[lagunabrewdude]

ditch one bbt

Unless you are serving out of the bbt's, I would invest your money in one less bbt and one more ferm. Once the beer hits bbt you should be able to push beers through the bbt quickly enough with one bbt( I use two 20bbl ccv and two 10 bbl ccv's with one 10 bbl bbt) and having an extra fermenter available will pay off in the long run. You definitely don't want to be rushing beers through fermentation.

Attempting to master the brewniverse,
Sean

[South County]

Unless you are serving out of the bbt's, I would invest your money in one less bbt and one more ferm. Once the beer hits bbt you should be able to push beers through the bbt quickly enough with one bbt( I use two 20bbl ccv and two 10 bbl ccv's with one 10 bbl bbt) and having an extra fermenter available will pay off in the long run. You definitely don't want to be rushing beers through fermentation.

Attempting to master the brewniverse,
Sean

agreed, unless your recipes require long aging post fermentation.

[znichols]

So if i added another fermenter and kept our 2bt's what kind of production cycle would be recommended? Also, i'm looking at adding a hopback. Good idea or bad?