quick question on dry hopping

first time dry hopping. im going to rack an alpha king pa clone into the secondary next week and its going to sit there for 2 weeks. im using 1 oz each of cascade, centennial, and columbus. should i dry hop in the first week or second week? whats the difference? thanks

It depends on the amount of hop aroma you're looking for. When I dry hop, I usually do 10 days. More than two weeks and you can sometimes get some vegy-like flavors. Either way...it doesn't really matter. Just make sure you use a hop sack... the first time I dry hopped, I used 3oz. of pellets and just threw them in. I ended up with hop flakes floating in my final product.

I usually dry hop for 2 weeks but it depends on things like desired aroma, number of carboys you have, convenience, ect. I just dont recommend more than 2 weeks.

Suthrncomfrt1884 said:

It depends on the amount of hop aroma you're looking for. When I dry hop, I usually do 10 days. More than two weeks and you can sometimes get some vegy-like flavors. Either way...it doesn't really matter. Just make sure you use a hop sack... the first time I dry hopped, I used 3oz. of pellets and just threw them in. I ended up with hop flakes floating in my final product.

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I don't mean to hijack this thread, but when you say "hop sack" could I use a paint strainer bag I bought from lowes? How could I ensure that it would float to the bottom?

A paint strainer bag would probably work pretty well for whole leaf hops but wouldn't be so hot for pellets because the mesh on paint strainer bags isn't as fine as muslin bags and pellets basically break down to a fine gooey consistency so I'd assume all of the gunk would just float right out of the paint strainer. The other downfall I'd see with a paint strainer is that most of the time they don't have drawstrings (typically its just an elastic band meant to fit snugly around a paint can/bucket) on them and since they're more rigid then muslin bags you cant very easily tie them off. I think you'd probably want them to sink to the bottom rather than float there and to do that you'd just need to load the bag up with with some sanitized marbles.

I typically dry hop with pellets and then cold crash for a day or two before I'm ready to rack to keg or bottle which helps all the hop matter drop to the bottom with the trub and means that I don't typically have to mess around with hop bags. If you've got a spare fridge thats got enough space to hold your fermenter for a couple days it works great.

Subscribed, I have dry hopped a few times now and I am still a little confused about what time maximizes hop aroma. I have gone anywhere from 5 days to 2 weeks.

LarsonLE said:

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but when you say "hop sack" could I use a paint strainer bag I bought from lowes? How could I ensure that it would float to the bottom?

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As fid pointed out...the paint strainer bags probably aren't the best option. I've heard of people using marbles...but I haven't personally seen a marble since I was 6. I use big stainless steel bolts.

I dry hop with pellets, without a bag all the time. Just toss 'em in. Just pay attention when you are racking to your bottling bucket and you won't get hops in your bottles. I've never had a problem. Also, I usually throw them in 7-10 days before bottling.

Like others, I dry hop with pellets and just put them in the secondary, as is, no washing, etc, and without a bag. Then I rack the beer on top.

However, when it's time to bottle, I use a large, fine-mesh laundry bag I got at Bed, Bath, and Beyond that works positively great. It's large, so it more than lines the bottling bucket, and it has a draw string that lets me secure it to the outside of the bucket.

Basically, I wash it well and then I sanitize it for a good while (while I'm preparing the rest of the things I need for bottling). I then line the bucket with the bag and rack the beer, very carefully to avoid a) aerating the beer and b) picking up floating stuff from the fermenter (Why be careless even when using the bag?). When I'm done racking, I just remove the bag, again very carefully.

Positive things about this are: 1) the fine mesh retains any stuff that makes it out of the fermenter, 2) it avoids having a bag inside the fermenter, exposed to the beer for many, many days (not that there is anything wrong with that if you follow good sanitation practices), 3) it avoids the work of having to take the bag full of hop particles out of the fermenter.

As a plus, in between bottlings, I use the bag to put my dirty laundry.

Here is a pdf scan of the packaging of the bag if you decide to check it out.

Good luck!