I’m currently fermenting a Two Hearted ale clone and the recipe I got from Beersmith has me dry hopping centennial and Cascade for 14 days. I’ve been reading the “Hops” book and dry hop times are kinda up in the air. Vinnie Cilurzo mentioned something about extended dry hopping extracting off flavors from the hops. I was contemplating dry hopping half the Cent. and Casc. for 5 days then removing it and dropping the other half for 5 more days. Any experiences are greatly appreciated.
Thanks
5-7 days should be plenty. No need for separate additions assuming you are using less than 4oz / 5 gallons.
I think Two Hearted only uses Centennial. You might be making a Founders Centennial clone by adding Cascade.
I keep dry hops in kegs for months and have never found them to be a source of off flavors.
You see… This is what I love about you Denny. It seems like you have encountered (over 400+ baches) most every known Home brewing issue or urban legend and debunked it in some way. You should write a book entitled “Grassroots Home brewing… Don’t obsess so damn much!”. I’d buy it. 
I thought that was a little odd. The recipe was the only two hearted ale clone on the cloud server for beersmith that had like 40 some odd likes so I figured I’d try it as is. It hops centennial at 60, 30, 15, 0. the dry hops were 50-50 centennial and cascade. Maybe since they’re close hop cousins, the brewer was looking for some little nuance.
Cascade definitely won’t hurt it. Two Hearted uses a proprietary yeast that isn’t the same as S-05 or WY1056. You aren’t making a Two Hearted clone, but I bet you will like the result.
It’s kinda what “Experimental Homebrewing” is all about. Between Drew and me, there have been a lot of trials and experiments with this type of stuff. We encourage people to try it for themselves and learn like we did.
+10. Couldn’t agree more Denny. Homebrewing is all about experimenting to see what you like. And with hops, there seems to be a TON of variation in how people perceive hops in the first place - aromas/flavors, grassiness, cattiness,‘dankness’ ( ), intensity, etc. I leave them in the keg most times now, and don’t find ill effects from this either. And if I add more dry hops after the fact, I usually add them to the hop canister or bag on top of the old ones. I know others would do it differently.
I was reading the same book the other day for the same purpose. I noticed that Lagunitas only dry hops for 3 days. Their Hop Stoopid is one of my favorite IIPA’s and isn’t lacking in any hop character, so I decided 3 days was enough for me.
Dry hopping is, I assume, like so many other things. The bulk of the desired action occurs early, then tapers off.
I dump my hops prior to kegging just to eliminate clogging. I’ve been thinking it would be interesting to use one of those large stainless mesh tea infusers filled with hops in the keg just prior to kegging, then just leave it in.
I dry hop right in my primary for about a week. For pellets I want to make sure they have enough time to disperse and drop out. For leaf hops I want to make sure they’ve had enough time to become saturated with beer to ensure that they’ve released all their oils.
I have no way to circulate my beer with my dry hops like many pros do, so I’d rather gibe them some extra time to ensure I get everything out of them.
Two Hearted is all Centennial, all the time. Beersmith recipe is wrong. There, I said it!
There was a recipe in Zymurgy by guys from Bell’s homebrew shop. The and find that, it will be in the online edition of Zymurgy.
If you really want to do it right, the Bells yeast is available in the bottles they market. Get some Oberon or one of the Pale Ales to culture from.
At last year’s NHC, Mitch Steele from Stone brewing gave a seminar and talked about dry hopping, among other things. He says Stone dry hops for 7 days. That’s worked well for me. Other breweries (Russian River?) say only a few (2-3) days are needed. Like Denny says, I’ve also found that hops in refrigerated kegs can stay there with no problem.
I also concur about Bell’s Two Hearted. It’s 100% Centennial.
Thanks for the heads up. I did track down the Zymurgy article and recipe and it is indeed a departure from the one I was using. At the end of the day, I think I’ll just call this one an IPA and brew the Two Hearted recipe on my next batch. I slacked on the cardinal rule for recipe formulation… Research
+1 to Two Hearted being all Centennial. I say no worries, brew it next time. There are a WHOLE lot worse things than having a Cascade/Centennial IPA around.
The only thing on my shopping list for today is one of those tea infusers.
I’ve been using tea balls that I bought years ago which will fit in the neck of a better bottle, but I’d rather use something bigger like the infuser in my kegs.
Will be dry hopping later this week.
I like this really well - it’s sort of a bigger version. Love it.
http://www.stainlessbrewing.com/Dry-Hopper-with-twist-cap_p_155.html
Now I need to price those infusers and make a decision. Curses!
I wish there was one for a better bottle. I guess a scaled down version wouldn’t hold much really. I’ll just continue to go commando.
I bought two-inch (I think) stainless tea balls for the BB. Get a bunch of them, fill each part way, and drop them in.
They fit just fine through the neck and can be tied off to pull them out.
I used to dry hop in a better bottle, and crammed a strainer bag full of dry hops through the neck. But for me, dry hopping in the keg with this thing is a dry hopper’s dream - it’s easy to pull the hops if you like, easy to add more, and obviously can be left in for the duration. Contains pretty nearly everything.