OK folks, for most of you this is like beating a herd of dead horses, but I’m a poor Belgian, and the IPA’s I’ve been brewing so far do not yet have the quality that I want (unfortunately this also applies to the majority of commercial IPA’s that one finds in Belgium). This time I’m brewing an IPA with +200 grams of hops for 10 liters of beer, so I want the best possible result for the bucks. Do you:
cold-crash before dry-hopping
rack to secondary before dry-hopping
cold-crash after dry-hopping
use some other dry-hopping magic (if yes, please explain )
Please respond massively so that the results become statistically significant.
My procedure has evolved to racking to secondary before dry hopping. Cold crashing before that is something I sometimes do, sometimes don’t do. Can’t tell a lot of difference so far.
Pretty much like Denny - I will cold crash and then dry hop if I remember to do it, but don’t sweat it if I dry hop warm then crash. I cannot tell any difference in the hops that way, but what I do with my (Denny’s) rye IPA, is I dry hop with an ounce of pellets divided between two stainless tea balls and leave the tea balls in for the whole shebang until the keg blows - it has been fine for me. But a caveat - I have a bunch of visitors who drain kegs quickly, so it’s not like the beer sticks around for more than a few weeks, typically.
And as always YMMV. So statistics are probably like Mark Twain said …at least on this aspect!
Since I use cheap 05 for most of my clean hoppy American styles I don’t worry about saving the cake so I simply wait for fermentation to complete, dry hop in primary, cold crash for a few days after and keg. Works well with no discernible loss of aroma.
In certain cases or just for the hell of it I will also dry hop in the keg but not very often. I’ve also found that using a lot of late addition and steeping hops really helps retain a lot of the hop aroma profile and have actually been able to reduce some of the dry hop quantity as a result. For example, I have found in my IPA I like 2oz at flame out with a 20 minute whirlpool/steep and 3oz of dry hop vs the 5oz of dry hop I used to do for 5 days in a 5 gallon batch. YMMV
Everything you said is pretty much exactly what I have found to work best for me. I have only dry hopped in the keg after normal dry hopping when I feel more is needed. I am however considering switching to dry hopping exclusively in the keg…
Yeah, I agree, especially with the steeping hops. It definitely retains more aroma to me, especially compared to late kettle hopping only. I’ve cut back a little on dry hops for most styles, though IPA still gets a pretty good dose.
+1 here we’ve done this as well but lately just been racking to secondary and drying hopping to speed up the process. However, we will sometimes crash after the dry hopping for 12-24 hours then keg.
I find that whirlpool hops last way longer than dry hops. Dry hops seem to fade in weeks to a month, but I’ve had IPA’s with good hop flavor/aroma for 6 months or more when using lots of whirlpool/hop stand hops.
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