this may have been discussed before but I can’t find it in the archives.
I picked some Amarillo Cryo Hops at Homebrew Con this year and plan to use them to dry hop my next batch of Amarillo IPA. When discussing it with one of the locals, he said that it is recommended to use a mixture of cryo hops and regular pellets when dry hopping. I already know that you need only about half as much of the cryo as you would pellets but I am curious if mixing with pellets is a good idea.
The reason for the question is that when I dry hop in the conical, I tend to plug up my inline screen with hop material when kegging directly from the fermenter. Although the pellet material tends to sink to the bottom, some still floats on the top and make its way into the racking arm and consequently the inline screen. I am thinking that the cryo hops might alleviate this but mixing them with pellets could become problematic. I saw a comment in the archives from Jeff Rankert saying that the cryo powder doesn’t sink to the bottom of the fermenter like the pellets do so this is another consideration. I am trying to avoid transferring the beer from the conical to glass carboys as I have done in the past when I dry hop the beer because 1) I am moving away from the dangers of glass and 2) to avoid oxygen pickup during the transfer (even though I purge my carboys with CO2 before the transfer).
The cryo hops are now in pellet form, said to behave more like conventional pellets. One thing from Hop School, there are tannins and such in the conventional pellets, without that you get a different impression. They said that is why they developed the American Noble. You can adjust ratios of cryo to conventional/Noble. Good luck.
As Jeff said, they stopped making cryo in powder form at least a year ago, for the reason you mentioned…it didn’t drop. I’ve dry hopped many batches with cryo pellets and they act just like T90 pellets. If your system has trouble with T 90, it won’t be any different with cryo. Don’t fall prey to the use 1/2 as much theory. That’s based on IBU and as we know that doesn’t matter for dry hopping. I ise cryo in the same amount I’d use T90 for dry hopping. Also lime Jeff said, be aware that it will taste different than using T90 because the vegetal matter is missing and it does have an effect. I’ve been working on blending cryo with American nobles to create my own lupulin/vegetation ratio. Looks like it’s gonna be an interesting investigation.
When I used cryo hops in the keg, it was too strong and had a metalic paste taste that took a few weeks to subside. Dry hopping in the fermenter, I never have had a bad experience.
The one and only time I used cryo-Hops, the beer was kind of boring. Something was just missing. But I also used half as much and after seeing what Denny posted, maybe I will try again using one for one.