Dry hopping advice

[lazydogbrewing]

I brewed my first pale ale the other day. It's pretty much JZ's pale from BCS:

11 lbs Pale 2-row
1 lb Munich
1 lb Crystal 40

.5 oz Galena @ 90 min
.5 oz Cascade & Amirillo @ 20, 10, 0 min

I had planned on making this extra hoppy. So I was going to dry hop. I had originally planned to dry hop with 1 oz each of Cascade and Amirillo. Do you guys think 1 oz is a bit much? Should I cut that down to .5 oz of each? I want it hoppy, but I don't want it extremely overboard either. Advice please!

[brewinhard]

Depending on your method of cooling, you may need to add more or less dry hops. My immersion chiller takes an hour or so to cool down to my desired pitching temps which means I am losing a lot of hop aromatics from my zero minute additions. Therefore I tend to have to dry hop my American style hoppy beers more. I typically start with a minimum of 1 oz. for a APA, and at least 2 oz. for my IPA's. Although the last IPA I brewed I dry-hopped in the primary fermenter with 4 0z. and still wanted more! Depending on how much hop aroma you prefer in your pale ales, then will really determine your hop addition. Maybe you could dry hop with .75 oz each of cascade and amarillo for starters and increase that next time if need be.

[NHBrewer]

There is tons of info in the Brewstrong on the topic but for my last IPA I used 3 ounces per fermenter and for APA's I use between two and four ounces. Its hard to go overboard.

Chris

[lazydogbrewing]

I think I already decided to just throw the ounce of each in. I don't think there is such a thing as "too much hops". I've been slowly going through the old Brew Strong casts. I'll have to search for the ones on hops and hit those up.

Anyway. How do you guys dry hop? Do you prefer to add the hops to the fermenter, then rack to a secondary after 7 to 10 days? Or do you guys prefer to dry hop in a secondary off of the trub?

[thatguy314]

I don't think there is such a thing as "too much hops".Anyway. How do you guys dry hop? Do you prefer to add the hops to the fermenter, then rack to a secondary after 7 to 10 days? Or do you guys prefer to dry hop in a secondary off of the trub?

Yes there is such a thing as too much hops, but it's relative to your beer. Even in a very hop forward beer, you need to have a malt backbone to back it up. I made a Bell's 2-hearted clone that had a lot of late hop additions. This recipe has a fairly light / delicate malt bill (Mostly 2-row, 0.5# crystal 10, 1.5# vienna) The recipe called for about an oz of dry hop, but I had 2 oz of centennials left and the package was open, so I decided to use both. Turned out to be a mistake. There was so much hop at this point, you couldn't taste the malt. I had to put it on the shelf and wait a couple months for the hops to die out before it was drinkable. If I had a more assertive malt bill, it probably could have stood up to that level of hopping much better.

An american pale ale should have a malt backbone fairly proportional to your hops. Based on your recipe, 2oz shouldn't overwhelm it. However, more hops isn't necessarily better. If I were you, I'd put in 1/2 oz each for a week, taste it, and add more if you think you need it.

I just add my dry hops to the primary when fermentation is almost complete. As long as most of the yeast has flocced you're not going to lose to much flavor, and there's less of a risk of oxidizing your beer.

[mediumsk]

I think the whole "adding dry hops after fermentation will oxidize your beer thiing" is a bunch of BS
I've tried dry hopping a few different ways and have found that the cleanest crispest flavor comes from crash cooling to let as much yeast as possible to drop out and then dry hopping cold for about a week and a half.

[BigNastyBrew]

I think the whole "adding dry hops after fermentation will oxidize your beer thiing" is a bunch of BS
I've tried dry hopping a few different ways and have found that the cleanest crispest flavor comes from crash cooling to let as much yeast as possible to drop out and then dry hopping cold for about a week and a half.

I tried 62° on my last APA and loved the results. I got the idea from reading Vinnie's article about Pliney in Zymurgy a few months ago.

I've since dry hopped in the keg at 38° and personally prefer the 62° more.

[thatguy314]

I think the whole "adding dry hops after fermentation will oxidize your beer thiing" is a bunch of BS
I've tried dry hopping a few different ways and have found that the cleanest crispest flavor comes from crash cooling to let as much yeast as possible to drop out and then dry hopping cold for about a week and a half.

I was referring to racking to secondary as maybe oxidizing beer.

That said, I agree. I dry-hopped before yeast had dropped and I found that I lost a lot of aroma and flavor when the yeast dropped.