How much is too much dry hop?
I plan on dry hopping my small 3.5 gallon batch pale ale.
I have 1 oz each of Mosaic and Citra.
I plan on dry hopping for 5 days.
Initially I designed the recipe to only use .5 oz each, I’m wondering if this is too conservative. In the same vein I do not want to overdue it.
Additionally this will be my first time kegging. Will I get more aroma from dry hopping in the keg or in the fermenter?
I like the idea of dry hopping while being protected by c02.
Since this is a pale ale and not an IPA, your 2 oz. of dry hops should work just fine for 3.5 gallons. And mosaic and citra is a great combo! (If it were an IPA, I’ve had good luck going as high as 1.5 oz. per gallon.) Five days works, but you might find that 3 days, or even 2, will still give you great dry-hop character, and you get to drink it sooner. I always dry hop in the fermenter, works fine. If you dry hop in the keg, make sure you have a way to separate the beer from the hop particles without clogging the dip tube. Generally this entails a dip-tube screen and a second keg to serve as the bright tank. Good luck!
Well, that’s a tough one to answer. It depends on what style you’re brewing and your personal preference on how much dry hop character you prefer. So I’ll tell you what I like and (as a reference) also tell you that I like a fairly high amount in my APAs and AIPAs:
APA - .5 - .6 oz/gallon
AIPA - .9 - 1.1 oz/gallon (depending on what I’m shooting for)
IIPA (don’t brew them as often now) - 1.2 - 1.3 oz/gallon
There ya go. It’s a good start!
Edit - I like to keg hop in 5 gallon paint strainer bags FWIW. There are lots of ways to hop though.
Since I keg hop, the beer is room temp for several hours as it gets cold in the kegerator. Some claim that they get a vegetal character from dry hopping at mostly colder temps. I and several others here don’t. People perceive hop character differently, sometimes very differently.The biggest thing to remember is that extraction is quicker done at room temps as opposed to cold temps (ie., cold = slower). I’ve done both and liked the results.
I’m thinking 5 days at 65-70f.
After primary fermentation i will be holding around the same temp so I’m inclined to believe that too much heating and cooling of the finished beer could possibly cause some off flavors?
On the other hand I’m still learning.
I used to keg dry hop at room temp at pressure for 5 days, then chill. Now I just put the keg right in the kegerator as I dry hop at carb pressure. Remember, extraction time is a little longer at cooler temps, but works fine. As for pressure, it’s no issue.