I am new to home brewing. Have done some reading and some brewing of 1 gallon batches to get acquainted with techniques. I purchased another 1 gallon IPA brew in a bag kit from Brewer’s Best. I would like to dry hop with Azacca as an experiment. If I understand correctly, I go through the normal extract brewing process using the hops provided (chinook, cascade). Then at what point is it best to add hops for dry hopping? Or am I saying this wrong? Thanks for any advice.
You have options. People who like styles like NEIPA like the effects of biotransformation they get from dry hopping during primary fermentatiuon. Others (I’m one of them) don’t care for that effect and like dry hopping after primary fermentation dies down. You can leave the beer in the fermenter and dry hop there, or you can do what I do and xfer the beer to a serving keg and dry hop in the keg. As you can see, there is no one right way and each method produces different effects. I advise you to pick one, tru it, and see what you think. You can always try another method on another batch.
Denny is correct. There are different ways to do it. You’ll need to try it a couple times to figure out what works for you.
If you keg, dry hopping in the keg is easy. If you don’t you’ll obviously need to do it in the fermenter.
Either way, you’ll need to make the choice about during fermentation or after. I don’t do it frequently, but I’ve always done it after fermentation.
Even if you keg, you might want to dry hop in the fermentor. That way you can get the dry hop character, crash cool, and settle out most of the hops and yeast and have less sludge in your keg. If you dry hop just when fermentation is winding down, you could get the best of all possible worlds: biotransformation, yeast scavenging oxygen introduced with dry hops, and decanting from sludge before kegging/bottling. (This is the approach I’ve used with lagers, though I admit I don’t really favor dry hopping in lagers.)
In my experience, a biotransformation dry hop addition boosts hop flavor while a later more traditional dry hop boosts hop aroma. Maybe that’s why people do both? My hazy IPAs with biotransformation dry hop additions have more hop flavor but less hop aroma than my more West Coast style IPAs. I am more moderate in my hop usage though…
Of course, the flavor you get from biotransformation is different also.
Kegging a 10 gallon batch today. 5 gallons got the active fermentation biotransformation dry hop, the other didn’t. I’ll be dry hopping both in kegs. Never did the biotransformation thing before, so looking forward to the side by side results. Let you know my impressions.
More so than I thought. The hydrometer samples from the two carboys were totally different beers. My wife and I both agreed that we preferred the one with biotransformation. Both were good, but the hop character on the active dry hopped beer was not only more intense, but also took on a richer flavor. It seemed to bring out the maltyness.
The experiment is not over. Both were dry hopped in their kegs. In hindsight I should have pulled some of the active dry hopped beer before kegging with hops. There would have been value in comparing the two finished beers with dry hopping to one with only biotranformation.
If memory serves, I’ve been hearing about “biotransformation” for a while now. The first time was in the context of Brett beers. I’ve heard several widely respected brewing folks talking about it in the context of ales, mostly New England IPA. I’ve even heard a Fullers brewer state that they dry hop London Pride during fermentation because of it. I figured someone must have finally done a scientific study and proved it’s a thing.
But today I’m listening to Palmer on Basic Brewing Radio and he stated, with expert reference, that some wine strains and Brett strains have been proven to interact with hop glycocides and produce biotransformation, but to date there is no evidence that ale or lager yeast do this. In fact there are failed attempts to prove it. So at a minimum, biotransformation in S. Cerevisiae ales is unknown, and possibly its doubtful. If we are limited to the studies so far, we’d have to say it’s not a thing.
Sad because I was buying what was being laid down, and started dry hopping my pales at day 3… although, unlike others I was not experiencing any new flavors from that. Until further data, I’m sticking with post fermentation dry hopping on the rare beers that I bother with it.
Awesome hobby, but you can’t have too much CDO about facts remaining facts.
CDO is OCD with the letters in alphabetical order, the way they should be! (Just a little isolmerization humor)
I tend to dry hop three days before bottling/kegging. If I keg, I add a small quantity of dry hops to the keg also.
My strategy: early, late, often