I have been re-reading the Peter Wolfe masters thesis: “A Study of Factors Affecting the Extraction of Flavor When Dry Hopping Beer”
And find myself wondering if anyone has acted on his findings that the extraction of the oils Myrcene and humulene peak at 4 hours.
I’m going to brew an IPA on Friday. I’m already changing one variable for this brew so I am hesitant to change another and complicate things.
Anybody try dryhopping for 4 hours?
I have taken a sample of a beer that has been dry hopped less than 24 hours. I wasn’t impressed.
I haven’t read the paper (its on the to-do list), so I can’t count on his methods.
However, at the beer tasting 101 class I took this past weekend, We got to try a light lager (Longboard) that was dosed with pure myrcene. I am not sure I would enjoy a beer at its peach myrcene content. Myrcene is known to be a large percentage of the oils in a hop, and I think it works better as a background aroma. I find it to be somewhat green, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
I guess I won’t be trying it. Seems like it is more for the production breweries trying to minimize fermenter time anyway. I’ve got time, I just don’t want to waste it. Thanks.
I read something similar in Mitch Steele’s IPA book. I think he said it peaked at one day of dry hopping.
Doesn’t work well in my home brewery, so perhaps it has to do with the sheer scale of a commercial brewery?
IIRC, Wolfe found peak extraction of 4 hours in bench-top tests with stirred vessels.
He also did a commercial scale test, gauging extraction from dry hops when the beer was not roused and circulated with a pump. I can’t remember numbers, but I do remember the circulated beer extracting considerably more oil than the traditional method. Much more badass than my college labs!
I guess you could mimic this at home with a conical and a pump. Worth a shot if you’ve got the equipment!