Dry Hop Testing with Bud Light

Just stumbled on this via reddit's /r/beer this afternoon. What a fantastic idea.
Sorry if this is a re-post, but I thought that this was too good not to share...

http://www.bertusbrewery.com/2013/03/dry-hopped-bud-light.html?m=1

This is the blog of a member here, Scottland, who does some great write-ups on IPA clones and general techniques. I actually did it myself with some Michelob Ultra last night. It's definitely really informative, especially if you're like me and hops just smell...uhhh..."hoppy" out of the bag.

I did this at my last club meeting after hearing the Anchor interview. I did mine a little different. I ordered small, fillable tea bags off Amazon and stuffed the hops into them before stuffing into the beer. That way I was able to use pellets or whole hops and I wasn't pouring hop gunk. I put the bottles into the freezer for 30 minutes prior to uncapping and hopping to try to cut down on the chance of foaming over when dropping the hops in. Also, I ended up using Amstel light...I was worried about trying to re-seal the twist off Bud Light caps. I think BL would have been better (less taste and aroma) as Amstel Light did not pair real well with some of the hops.

It worked out well, but I only gave it ~ 1 week before the meeting. I would leave it at least 2 to make sure you get good hop aroma infused.

One other note, the beer did foam quite a bit when we opened them. and some bottles it was hard to pull the tea bags back out, so we just poured them anyway...the bags did an excellent job of keeping hops stuff out of the beer.

second post I've seen about this today

two things. I just stopped by a local nano brewery yesterday and saw they had Mikkeller's single hop IPA, but all of them in one box. I think there was 20 different bottles in all. if you are interested in this Mikkeller IPA set. they are for sale. i'm not affiliated with the brewery but I will support them. PM me if you are in the waterloo iowa area and are interested. 2nd I just bought 15 different 4oz hop bags from farmhouse brew supply to test different hop types. this is how I will do it for sure. do you get both flavor and aroma from this technique? or just aroma? is there any bittering from the hops using this technique?

CloverBrew said:

do you get both flavor and aroma from this technique? or just aroma? is there any bittering from the hops using this technique?

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That's what I was wondering, too. I've seen the debate in forums and such about what "bitter" quality you actually get from dry hopping (take this BYO article, for example).

Part of the reason I'm going to try this experiment is to see for myself what flavor and aroma characteristics the dry hops would impart to the beer specifically that you can't get from flavor/aroma additions to the boil.

It's one thing to read what others say, but it's another to taste it for yourself!

Agreed. Does anyone disagree with using bud light. Or is there a milder "neutral" brew that may lend as a better palette

I am planning to conduct this experiment as well and have come to the conclusion after testing and comparing several beers that Samuel Adams Boston lager to be a good if not better candidate rather than bud light

I'm conducting this experiment, too, but I am using Michelob Ultra instead of BL. I only had 4 different hops on hand so that's all I'm testing for now. I added 1.5g each of Centennial, Nelson Sauvin, Simcoe and Falconer's Flight 7c's to 4 separate bottles yesterday, recapped then gently rocked each bottle to get the pellets to break up and dissolve. I'm keeping the bottles at room temp for 3 days then I'll rapidly chill them in a bucket of ice water to - hopefully - crash out the hops.

CloverBrew said:

Agreed. Does anyone disagree with using bud light. Or is there a milder "neutral" brew that may lend as a better palette

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Bud Light, Coors Light, Michelob Ultra. Reason being that these are very bland beers with no distinctive flavors or aromas.

are we just going to "re-twist" the caps onto the bottle.
these are what I ordered from Farmhouse brewing supply. 4oz each

bramblig cross
cascade
challenger
East Kent Golding
Horizon
Liberty
Norther Brewer
Willamette
Calypso
Palisade

Read the comment section of that blog post. Scottland says he also used SNPA with great results too.

Well, I just sampled the Michelob Ultras that I dry hopped with 1.5g each of Simcoe, Nelson Sauvin, Falconer's Flight 7C's and Centennial. I got a bit of aroma from each - moreso with the Centennial (pineapple) and Nelson Sauvin (dank) - but no real change in flavor. What's most interesting/useful to me is that 1.5g in 12oz is the equivalent of 2.85oz in 5gal., so I guess I am going to use a lot more hops when I dry hop in the future!

I still have 8 more Ultras (and I bought more hops to test, of course) so I'm going to give this another shot.

Oh - and I recapped the bottles with the same twist-off caps and there was a nice puff of CO2 when I uncapped them now. So, that definitely works.

MagicSmoker said:

Well, I just sampled the Michelob Ultras that I dry hopped with 1.5g each of Simcoe, Nelson Sauvin, Falconer's Flight 7C's and Centennial. I got a bit of aroma from each - moreso with the Centennial (pineapple) and Nelson Sauvin (dank) - but no real change in flavor.

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Thanks for the update, Smoke. Glad to hear the screw caps worked alright.

That's interesting that you found only aroma added. I've always sworn that dry hopping added some flavor to my beers, but maybe it's just my brain playing tricks on me...

That is interesting to me too. I just went to a brew pub where you could personally dry hop your pint and a chinook dry hop gave a boost of flavor to an otherwise boring IPA. I did a before and after note. I realize aroma and perceived flavor are very much related, so I suppose that could be it.

Holy_Hops said:

Thanks for the update, Smoke. Glad to hear the screw caps worked alright.

That's interesting that you found only aroma added. I've always sworn that dry hopping added some flavor to my beers, but maybe it's just my brain playing tricks on me...

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Funny, I always thought that dry hopping only added aroma, and little to no flavor...

Anyway, my original plan was to try 12 different hops and then maybe take 3 or 4 of the ones I liked the best and do a second round of dry-hopping at varying amounts. I figured that dry-hopping at the rate of nearly 3oz per 5gal would have been very noticeable, bordering on extreme, but it instead turned out to be barely noticeable, bordering on sedate...

An interesting follow-up experiment, though one that will be considerably more difficult to do, would be to split a batch up in two halves at flameout and add, say, 3oz of hops to one during the whirlpool and dry-hop the other with the same amount of hops after fermentation to see which one provides more aroma (and flavor).

Grantman1 said:

That is interesting to me too. I just went to a brew pub where you could personally dry hop your pint and a chinook dry hop gave a boost of flavor to an otherwise boring IPA. I did a before and after note. I realize aroma and perceived flavor are very much related, so I suppose that could be it.

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Was this a "Randall" setup? Ie - whole leaf hops in something like a canister water filter that the beer passes over on the way to the glass? Any idea what this would equate to in ounces of hops per 5gal of beer?

The beers I dy hopped, it dramatically changed the flavor. I'm really surprised to hear it didn't taste any different for you.

Flavor and aroma are inseparably linked, and of course very subjective. Try holding your nose and sipping your favorite IPA, and I bet it will taste exactly like bitter, slight sweet alcohol and nothing else.
I like the sound of this experiment, if for nothing else to use up left over cheap beer!

I interested in thoughts on a varient of this. I normally keg my batches, and when I start to get bored with a batch or need space or want to have beer to take other places, bottle from the keg. So, my thought process is to buy a pony/quarter keg of some bland commerical beer (if so which kind is the question), or to brew a batch of a blonde ale using a netural bittering hop (e.g. Magnum, Perle, Galena). I would then use this keg as my source, and dry hop with various hops when I bottle.

To get really fancy, since I have multiple kegs, I could dedicate a keg for each hop. The idea would be to santize each keg, add hops (probably in a hop bag), do a keg to keg transfer from the source keg to the target (of say 1/2 gallon), top off each target with co2 and then let it sit for a week or so to dry hop (just like you do for a normal dry hop). Cold crash to remove any hop gunk, and off ya go.

Thoughts?

MagicSmoker said:

Was this a "Randall" setup? Ie - whole leaf hops in something like a canister water filter that the beer passes over on the way to the glass? Any idea what this would equate to in ounces of hops per 5gal of beer?

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The setup was that once your pint was pulled, you'd get a small stainless tea infuser ball with leaf hops in it. I just let it sit in my glass for nearly the whole time. Beforehand the IPA was pretty bland, but about midway through it became a bit of a grapefruit bomb from the chinook. I didn't weigh the hops, so I can't comment on what it would equate to in a 5 gallon recipe.

scottland said:

The beers I dy hopped, it dramatically changed the flavor. I'm really surprised to hear it didn't taste any different for you.

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First off, thanks for taking the time to write such an excellent blog article about your experiment. It totally inspired me to try it myself, and if my results didn't match yours, well, I still consider it a success in that I learned a lot in the process.

That said, maybe what I learned is that I did it wrong? I just got finished bottling a black IPA of my own devising that used Magnum for bittering and then just Nelson Sauvin for the additions at 20 minutes, flameout and dry-hopping (2oz for 4.5gal). The aroma from the bottling bucket was very strong - bordering on cat pee strong - so I wonder if I simply did not get good utilization during the dry-hopping experiment? I did notice that most of the hops seemed to remain near the top several hours after adding them so I tried gently inverting the bottles to better mix them. That seemed to work somewhat, but perhaps not enough?

Dunno, but I feel like I took for one team science anyway, and that's a win no matter what.

Just tried this with Sam Adams light, popped the first one had 2 pellets of warrior added to it and after 1 week nothing, no hop smell taste at all, even chewing the ones that made it to my glass had no hop flavor. Gonna give it another week on the other 5 I have left.

Holy_Hops said:

That's interesting that you found only aroma added. I've always sworn that dry hopping added some flavor to my beers, but maybe it's just my brain playing tricks on me...

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It does add flavor and aroma when building an actual homebrewed IPA. But if you start with a weak and watery lager base, heavy with 6-row, flaked corn, sugars, and other adjuncts, you'll be hard-pressed to alter the "true flavor" of the final beer simply by adding two hop pellets after the fact. You should still know you're drinking Bud Light. This experiment does not attempt to change that fact. It is simply offering a subtle insight to the character offered by certain hops via quick dryhopping.

You could go to your local homebrew store and rub the hops between your palms to open up their oils and smell the same thing. But Scottland's tests are valuable because it goes one step ahead of this test by incorporating your sense of taste into the equation. We smell better when we taste things. But realize that this is not a replacement for actually brewing an IPA from scratch and truly being able to sense the complete hop character.

bobbrews said:

It does add flavor and aroma when building an actual homebrewed IPA. But if you start with a weak and watery lager base, heavy with 6-row, flaked corn, sugars, and other adjuncts, you'll be hard-pressed to alter the "true flavor" of the final beer simply by adding two hop pellets after the fact...

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Point taken... It was difficult for me to overlook the taste of the Mich Ultra for this test.

I guess to do this test properly one would need to brew up a "plain vanilla" IPA, so to speak. Ie - using just 2-row malt and bittered with a clean hop like Magnum (no flavor or aroma additions).

Perhaps I'll do that this weekend...

I read this post a week or two back and decided to give this a whirl. I grabbed a few cream ales from an NC brewery. I dry hopped one with Tettnang and the other with Saaz- purposely choosing hops I never dry hopped with.

Cracked the tettnang the other night and the dry hop made a significant impact on flavor and (of course) aroma. It turned what was once a plane jane, "regular" beer into one with a spicy, slightly herbal, and almost a slight stone fruit character. Really made an impact.

I'm gonna continue this type of thing so I can start messing around with dry hop combinations.

I tried this with some Bud Light and ended up with geysers! I guess adding the hops gave the beer a bunch of nucleation points. Anyone else have this problem?

m_c_zero said:

I tried this with some Bud Light and ended up with geysers! I guess adding the hops gave the beer a bunch of nucleation points. Anyone else have this problem?

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Did you have the beer ice cold when you added the hops, and then ice cold again before pouring?

scottland said:

Did you have the beer ice cold when you added the hops, and then ice cold again before pouring?

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Fridge cold, but yes when I added the hops then the beers sat out at room temperature for about an hour after being removed from the fridge before opening. Should they be relatively warm?

m_c_zero said:

Fridge cold, but yes when I added the hops then the beers sat out at room temperature for about an hour after being removed from the fridge before opening. Should they be relatively warm?

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You want them ice cold whenever you are opening or capping them. I'd guess I'd you left them out for an hour before opening, that's the problem.

Mine don't gush at all, so long that I open them straight out of the fridge. I keep them at room temp while I'm 'dry hopping' them.

scottland said:

You want them ice cold whenever you are opening or capping them. I'd guess I'd you left them out for an hour before opening, that's the problem.

Mine don't gush at all, so long that I open them straight out of the fridge. I keep them at room temp while I'm 'dry hopping' them.

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Awesome, thanks for the info!

For those who dont want to recap a bud light, just transfer it slowly into a grolsch bottle!