I’ve got an IPA that has been on the yeast for 2 weeks tomorrow. Can I add my dry hops now before I go to the keg? Or would it be better to try to find a nylon bag and do it in the keg? The plan is to add 1 oz of Cascade whole leaf hops. Just not sure when is the best time to do it. If I add them to the primary, how long would you leave them before racking to the keg?
Thanks
I’ve heard recommendations from Matt Brynlson of Firestone Walker to add dry hops just before the final gravity bottoms out. That is to help scrub out or consume any O2 that made its way into the fermenter during the dry hopping. The trick is knowing when its close enough to the end. That means either taking gravity measurements or observing bubbling to determine when that is.
I dry hop in my primary, but I have a Fermenator with a Corney-type lid. That is one of the reasons I bought it, so that I can easily drop my dry hops in a sack into the fermentor. There is no problem with dry hopping in the primary excepting for adding the hop charge late enough to reduce driving off aromatics.
I’m in the Brynlson camp on dry hopping duration too. Only 3 to 4 days on the hops and then rack off the beer. This reduces the opportunity to impart grassiness in the beer. I personally prefer pellet hops since they are usually better preserved and their lupulin glands are well ruptured to let the lupulin better contact with your beer. Now if you have really fresh and aromatic whole hops, that is better than pellets. I just can’t typically find them fresh enough.
I took a major leap several months back and decided to try dry hopping in the serving keg. I have done a couple of red ales and IPA’s. I have not found any problems with it, grassiness or serving negatives. It saves lots of cleaning steps and I love that. Just did another IPA yesterday.
You can certainly do it, although as Martin mentioned above, you missed the ideal window of opportunity in your primary. It sounds like Martin and I have the same setup and philosophy on dry-hopping and fermentation vessesl. The other important thing to remember in addition to adding the dry hops right before terminal gravity is to rouse the vessel with either CO2 or swirling the bucket/carboy every day or every other day to keep the hops in suspension. Just throw them in loose, they will saturate and fall into suspension.
I agree. I prefer keg hopping and I do it frequently. In all those batches I’ve never encountered the fabled grassiness. Maybe it’s the hop varieties that I use.
I think “grassiness” with dry hopping comes from leaving the beer on the dry hops to long, IMHO
FWIW, I normally keg hop, but when I’m in a hurry and want to make sure that I’ve got dry hop character I’m not adverse to throwing the hops into primary after the rollicking part of fermentation is done.
Well, I’ve gone 2-3 months without issues. So what’s “too long”?
Thanks all. I will see if I have any suitable pellets instead of leaf hops. I just thought leaf would be easier to get out when racking.
Related question that came to me late last night. This is my first attempt at this recipe. Can you dry hop after carbonation? I’m thinking maybe I should rack the beer and carbonate it and see if I like it as is first and then do a 1/2 oz addition later to see what differences the dry hops bring to the beer and which one I prefer for future. I’ve never dry hopped before.
The beer already has 1 oz of Cascade FWH, 15 g of Perle at 60, 1 oz of Cascade and 1 oz of Amarillo blended with 1/2 oz additions every 5 minutes from 20 to flameout. Could be enough already for my tastes.
The re’s no technical reason you can’t dry hop after carbonating. Practically it might be a hassle since when you add the hops they’ll provide nucleation sites for CO2 and the beer will fizz up.
touche ;D