dry hopping

Ingredients
1

Hi guys,
I just dry hopped my first beer, an IPA with Mosaic hops. I made a 2 gallon batch and dry hopped the secondary, one gallon with Mosaic and one with Cascade, I think. I realized on #2 I need to label the leftover hops. I’ve had a bottle of each and both taste and smell great. Can I dry hop the primary too and is there some kind of basket I can put the hops in or should I not worry and just through the pellets in? Is there a ratio of hops, wort and dry hopping. Like if I put 2 oz. of hops in the boil how many oz. can I dry hop with and how much is too much?
Bob

2

Hi Bob, I’m certainly not the expert here but I have not seen any posts about appropriate ratios for dry hopping. It seems to be one if the hottest topics on here. How long, how much, how long, pre or post crash, etc. the main thing I can say is that it’s not too much until you don’t enjoy drinking the beer. I have often seen people state 1-2 oz per gallon for dry hopping but it’s really up to your taste: can you taste the difference in 2 gallons between 3&4 oz? If not, that 4th oz was wasted. That’s the fun if the whole process, experiment to find what you like. Let us know what you decided and how it turns out

3

There really is no IBU contribution with dry hop additions, it’s all about the flavor and aroma added so it really becomes a personal thing. To some degree it is also about the hops being used for the dry hop

4

There are several options (and several schools of thought) on dry hopping. First you can dry hop at the end of primary or in a secondary or keg. In primary or secondary you can:  1/ Dump in the pellets loosely and at bottling or kegging use a piece of sanitized panty hose around the racking cane to act as a filter  2/Put the hops in a nylon paint strainer bag weighted with marbles to ensure that all the hops are in contact with your beer. The very fine mesh acts as a good filter.  3/ Dry hop in keg (like I am doing now) using one of these :

http://www.stainlessbrewing.com/Dry-Hopper-with-twist-cap_p_155.html

As for amounts, personal preference comes into play, so I’ll tell you what I use:

APA -    2 -2.5 oz for 7 days

AIPA -  4 -6 oz for 7 days

IIPA -    Two rounds of dry hopping, 4-6 oz each round, 5 days each.

I dry hop at ~ 65-68F.  There you go, that’s a start. Enjoy !

EDIT - As Gary said, there is no bitterness extracted from dry hopping. Dry hopping gives you stellar hop aroma and hop flavor, so you would bitter your beer to whatever amount you would’ve anyway.

5

The above amounts are what I see recommended from multiple sources for those styles. I think those are good baselines for most styles. Just compare the amount of hop character you want to the levels in an APA/IPA/IIPA and add appropriately.

The good thing about dry hopping is that if you feel like you don’t have enough aroma from dry hopping you can pull the dry hops and add more until you are happy with the beer.