Secondary fermentation and dry hopping in keg?

[BrewJim]

Hello brewers,

I'm still a relative novice at this homebrewing malarkey, but am a total convert. I have a question though that I hope someone can help with.

I've got a pale ale brew in my primary fermenter. It's been there for about a week now and I'm pretty sure it's reached its final gravity. The recipe calls for dry hopping for another week or two before kegging/bottling. I had planned to syphon the beer into a secondary fermenter and dry hop in that, before transferring to my keg. I've been trying to get hold of a glass carboy to use as a secondary fermenter, but can't get one from my local homebrew shops for love nor money. So (I'm getting to my question, promise!), could I put my beer into my keg, dry hop/secondary ferment in that for a week or two, and then add some priming sugar to the keg to condition the beer? Or would this not be a good idea for any reason?

Any help or advice will be gratefully received!

Jim

 

[Aleman]

May sound radical . . . but why not just bung the hops into the primary now . . . leave them for a week then rack to the keg?

Oh . . . Use a hop bag if you are doing this with whole hops . . . with pellets it doesn't matter so much

 

[BrewJim]

Thanks for the reply Aleman,

That would be the simple thing to do, yes! I've been trying to find out a lot more about secondary fermentation, whether it's worth doing etc.... That's why I was thinking of dry hopping in the keg, so this would act as a secondary fermentation too. But, do you think this isn't worth the extra hassle?

Cheers,

Jim

 

[Aleman]

Dry hopping in the cask is what the commercial boys do . . . but their taps have a different design to cope with the loose hops. If I was dry hopping in a plastic keg I wouldn't do anything different to normal, which is rack adding priming sugars , bung in the hops, seal . . . and wait