I split my 11 gallons of 1.057 OG wort into three fermentations; Trappist Abbey Ale, ESB, and London Ale. For the sake of the Abbey, I hopped fairly lightly in the boil, about 25 IBU’s. After the primary stage is done, I’m going to dry hop the ESB and London Ale to get them closer to style. I have about 3 1/2 gallons in each Better Bottle. I’m using 2 ounces of home grown Fuggles, unknown strength, maybe about 5%, in each. Any estimates on the approximate IBU increase I would see with that? Would you use more? As I won’t be racking to a secondary carboy, I want to use a hop bag and submerge the hops into the primary with a sanitized poker of some sort. Then, I’ll let them sit at room temp for at least another week before moving them into refrigeration. Any risk with contamination there? Could I let them sit longer at room temperature? Would you use a hop bag?
You won’t get any bitterness from the dry hops. BU can only be extracted from the boil. 2 ounces is about right for dry hopping. I usually use that amount in 5 gallons but, you should be alright.
What if I make a tea, with some sugar, boil it awhile, and add it in hops and all?
That will add some bitterness. Calculate how much based on the AA% and gravity of your boil, then calculate the BU addition based on adding that much to your fermenter. For example, if you make a tea that is 50 BU and 2 qts, added to 5 gallons will give you 5.5 gallons with +4.5 BUs (roughly).
Work it backwards - figure out how many BU you want to add per gallon and what volume tea you want to make. Then calculate the necessary BU for your tea. Then calculate how many oz of hops you need to boil for how long to get the BUs that you want.
I hope that makes sense to you . . .
Thanks Tom,
The guys in the brew shop talked me into dry-hopping instead of boiling. “The appearance of bitterness” in place of the real thing. So, that’s what I did. No hop bag or anything, just shoved them in there. No worries about contamination they say, not when you already have alcohol in the solution. What I will do however, is boil some more wort from DME and agave nectar, bitter it normally, and add it in. All the whole hops I added are going to soak up a lot of beer, and I only had about 3 1/2 gallons to begin with.
That’s cool, let us know how it turns out. There’s no hurry on adding the bitterness, so for your own information you can wait to add the hop tea until you taste the beer after several days with the dry hops.
And for what it’s worth, I dry hop with pellets, they seem to settle out better and give up their flavor more easily. Plus they’re easier to clean out of my carboys. 
I see what you mean about dry-hopping with flowers. I’ll save them for boils from now on. I’ll keep you posted on how things turn out. Do you ever add hops to the mash? I’ve heard about it, but what’s the point?
What’s the point, indeed! I tried it a few times before concluding it was a waste of hops.
I just topped off the ESB and London Ale with 1.064 OG, 62 IBU wort. I bittered it cleanly with Cluster, as each carboy has 2 ounces of home grown Fuggles floating on top. If that much Fuggles isn’t enough English character, I don’t know what is. I swirled the carboys by the grab handles to get all those whole Fuggles soaked, and put them away. Satisfied, I can now wait.
This post has made me think that keeping a bottle of hop extract on hand is a good idea for adding options when splitting batches. You could even run off half the batch through the chiller then add some LME and hop extract before running off to the second fermenter!
Hey James…nice to see you on board posting!
I like to dry hop with fresh whole hops if possible but I also use pellets. I also prefer to use a muslin bag because it makes it alot easier to retrieve them and it keeps most of them from being picked up and served into the beer.
I use the aroma of the hops as an indicator of the use. For example, I recently purchased some Amarillo whole hops that have an awesome aroma so I use them for dry hopping as well as late additions and they lend a very aromatic quality to the finished beer.
Adding bitterness after the boil just sounds like a bad idea. Boiling with sugar and adding the tea and hops also sounds pretty odd. Next time, I would just split batches that can use the same wort - like an abbey ale and a Scottish ale or a Kolsch and a Belgian Blonde Ale (adding some sugar solution to the carboy would get you there, IMO).
I just heard of these today . . . I haven’t tried them.
First time I’ve seen this. This might be helpful in the case one has inadvertantly ommitted a hop addition.
Emergency stash. 8)
My thoughts exactly, but I haven’t tried a beer using them AFAIK, so I don’t know what it tastes like. For $2 it’s worth a shot though. 
I used them a couple times. Treat them like Mt. Hood ormaybe Willamette. If used early in the boil, you will get IBU’s. If used late, you won’t get much at all.
So if you boiled it for 60 minutes in a small amount of water, you should be able to add that to the beer and bumb up the bitterness, right? I think it sounds easier than trying to get bitterness out of pellet or whole hops in a small volume.
In my experience, you may get bitterness, but it’s a very harsh, vegetal bitterness that I certainly wouldn’t want in my beer.
Are we still talking about the hop shots Denny, or are you talking about boiling hops in plain water?
Today, 22 days after brewing, I tasted all three brews.
Wyeast 3787 - awesome. This one was not augmented after the brew like the other two. But something new I did, new for me, was to include carmelized sugar in the boil, turbinado, carmelized in a large skillet. It’s amazing how the sugar allows it to attenuate very dry (82% 1.010) without erasing all the sweetness, adding the elegance factor. This one is cold conditioning now, and I’ll keg it in a week or two.
Wyeast 1968 - turned out great. No problems resulted from adding the bitter wort a few days after the boil. I wouldn’t do it again unless I had to, but I learned a lot. The added sugar also let it attenuate way down there (80% at least), but it still has sweetness. Not a style winner (too dry), but clear of course, clean, elegant, good. It’s also cold conditioning, like the Belgian.
WLP013 - Ditto as for the 1968. Less flocculent of course, but no problem I’m going to bottle it, and put off cold conditioning for about another month.
What I learned - Sugar is a great additive. Increases attenuation, dries the finish, and leaves sweetness.
I wouldn’t add as much as I did in any future beers, except for Belgians, but it’s awesome stuff.
Thanks for all the help.