Dry hopping in the bottle

I was listening to the latest BSHB podcast "For The Love of Hops" when I had what can only be described as a looney idea.

Why not dry hop at bottling time. I have a scale with enough resolution to be able to weigh hop pellets with enough accuracy to try this.

So before I grab the hops and scale for tomorrows bottling session I thought I should look into this a but further both here and by listening to the rest of the podcast.

While it seems that the time needed to bottle condition would give a very grassy hop effect, I have also read about folks dry hopping directly into the keg.

Would I end up with grassy beer or is it worth trying? If it's worth trying how much should I use? (My bottles are 18oz bottles) The scale has 0.001gram accuracy.

I'm thinking somewhere between half a gram and a full gram per bottle.

Well I've had several commercial brews that do this and I just love it. However, pellet hops would be a poor choice because you're either preparing 50 teeny tiny bags to contain the hops in the bottle, or you'll end up drinking a hop slushie. Put 1-2 whole cone hops in there and it's easy enough to filter out at drinking time, but I would never drink a beer with pellet hops in the bottle.

IMO, bad idea to bottle dry hop no matter what form of hops you use. Not only will it be in there too long (2 weeks is the normally accepted maximum to leave hops in beer, at room temp), but you'll have hop matter going to the glass.

I feel really silly right now for not actually searching for the exact title.

To the folks who replied, thanks for chiming in so quickly.

Following the links below it does indeed seem to be a terrible idea.

I will repeat that I've had excellent beers with whole cone hops in the bottle. No grassy off flavors or anything. And fishing out a site hop cone from your glass isn't the most difficult task of the day....


However, I think force carbing in a keg and then only bottling up a 6er or so as needed would be the best approach.

If you're kegging then just dry hop in keg. I do that now instead of dry hopping in fermenting vessel. Much easier to add/remove (when cleaning the keg out) the hop bag that way. With the hop bag, and whole hops, it's stupid easy. I simply add an ounce of whole hops to a sanitized (Star San) nylon hop bag and drop it in just before the keg goes into the brew fridge for chilling and carbonation. I use the 2 week 'set and forget' method, which gives the hops plenty of time to infuse the beer.

BudzAndSudz said:

I will repeat that I've had excellent beers with whole cone hops in the bottle. No grassy off flavors or anything. And fishing out a site hop cone from your glass isn't the most difficult task of the day....


However, I think force carbing in a keg and then only bottling up a 6er or so as needed would be the best approach.

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Sorry, I'd not intended to write off your input. I am however limited to pellet hops at the moment.

I promise though that should I ever find cone hops locally I will give it a try. The closest I have found so far was loose leaf in I think Cascade.

Golddiggie said:

If you're kegging then just dry hop in keg. I do that now instead of dry hopping in fermenting vessel. Much easier to add/remove (when cleaning the keg out) the hop bag that way. With the hop bag, and whole hops, it's stupid easy. I simply add an ounce of whole hops to a sanitized (Star San) nylon hop bag and drop it in just before the keg goes into the brew fridge for chilling and carbonation. I use the 2 week 'set and forget' method, which gives the hops plenty of time to infuse the beer.

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Kegging is still a long way off for me, but I will at some point go that route.

http://www.theflavorbomb.com/

Grand canyon brewery made this for dry-hopping or oaking a beer in the bottle.. really cool!

BudzAndSudz said:

Well I've had several commercial brews that do this and I just love it. However, pellet hops would be a poor choice because you're either preparing 50 teeny tiny bags to contain the hops in the bottle, or you'll end up drinking a hop slushie. Put 1-2 whole cone hops in there and it's easy enough to filter out at drinking time, but I would never drink a beer with pellet hops in the bottle.

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Don't guess I've ever seen this done. Just out of curiosity, what commercial brewers do this?

Rick

F250 said:

Don't guess I've ever seen this done. Just out of curiosity, what commercial brewers do this?

Rick

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If you ever happen to get up to WI, O'so brewery makes an IIPA with a hop cone in the bottle (about halfway down, Lupulin Maximus). The beer itself was pretty tasty. I did get a small chunk or two of hop leaf into my glass, but it was easy enough to dig out or drink around.

Its hard to say if they hop cone actually lent any hop flavor to the beer since it was a pretty hoppy beer anyways, but I certainly didn't taste any grassy flavors. Although its probably also force carbonated and then bottled, removing the 2-3 weeks for conditioning that homebrew would require, making it less likely to give grassy flavors. I've dryhopped in a keg for several months at lower temps without problem, so keeping it cold might be necessary. Not sure what the surface area of a hop cone would be, but definitely less than pellets, so that might help as well.