Dry hopping in Fermenter or Cask

Hi,

I recently visited a microbrewery and they dry hopped one of their beers in the cask.

On my next batch i am wanting to put my beer in a barrell and some into bottles.

How would i go about doing this? would i need to dry hop the beer whilst fermenting and then seperate accordingly becasue obviously i cant dry hop each bottle.

Typically, you finish fermentation then add dry hops for 2-5 days.  u would want to finish fermentation, then add to the barrel.  Depending on how long you plan to keep it in the barrel, you would likely add hops in the last week or so before you plan to bottle.  That would give a hoppy aroma and flavor to the bottled beer.    Of course, this is one option.  Others will likely have a different option.  If hops are left in too long, you risk extracting undesirable vegetale or "green" flavors. 

When using a barrel, be sure you have extra fermented beer to top off the evaporation and loss.

Thanks for the advice.

So let me see if I've got this right.

Allow beer to ferment for required amount of days then transfer to pressurised barrel and add hops? Leave for 2-5 days and then bottle straight from the barrel? What about the hops in the barrel would I need to remove them as I'll want to drink from the barrell also.

I assume commercial brewers either do beer for cask or beer for bottle in a brew and don't do both in the same brew?

When you say barrel, do you mean keg?  It kind of sounds like you do.  You would not pressure a barrel but you would a keg. 

Hops in the keg can be tricky as you need to be careful not to clog the line.  Usually you add hops to a hop sack and suspend it in the beer.  I've tied the hop filled hops sack to the dip tube prior to filling.

Don't pressurize the keg.  That is, do not put on CO2 for initial dry hops stage.  I would expect you to transfer from the keg to a bottling bucket, prime for bottle conditioning adding necessary yeast or sugar per your own process then bottle.

You can also carbonate in the keg with dry hops after the initial dry hopping stage.  You can bottle from the keg if you have the setup to do so.  You would not need to prime for bottle conditioning as mentioned above.  It is a lot of effort to bottle from the keg and can be really foamy.  You do not want any hops in the bottle.

Hops left in too long can taste a bit vegetal, so drink fast.  Cask hopped beers in brewpubs usually go in a couple days.

For IPA's I like to dry hop after 7 to 10 days of fermentation start, which means adding hops to secondary fermentation even if you dont transfer to a secondary fermenter. Dry hopping is based on preference, mine is leaving them in until I transfer to kegs or bottling bucket. They stay in there 7 to 10 days depending on when the finish gravity is achieved.
So the only extra process involved is simply adding hops at day 7-10;  gravity aprox 1.020.  CHEERS!