Dry Hopping lengh of time

I recently brewed an Arrogant Bastard clone from a recipe that i would include but is currently eluding me. Everything seamed to turn out fine except when I went to bottle the beer smelled like a pine tree it tasted OK just smelled very piney i dry hopped the beer with 1 oz of cascade hop pellets and left them in for about 5 weeks before I got around to bottling. Is the overpowering pine smell due to leaving the hops in for so long I actually bottled 5 weeks ago and am afraid to open one and figured they could use as much time as I could give them to sit and mellow out.

This was my first time dry hoping and the thought was the longer in the carboy the better the conditioning would be but does the longer time in the carboy makes the hop smell even stronger?

Good question. Iv'e wondered that myself. But I would pop one open.

5wks? Good gawd, I have trouble waiting 5 days!! Pop one!

I recently did an experiment on this. . .I did a 10 gallon batch of beer (american amber). I filled one six gallon carboy, then boiled doin the remaining wort a little, added a different flame out hop, and fermented with different yeast. I dry hopped each beer. I dry hopped both with the same hops, but left the heavier gravity beer in dry hop 2 weeks longer--Long and the short of it--different beers, but I didn't noticed a whole lot of difference in the hoppy nose. (I used amarillo for both). The heavier gravity beer was a little more floral, but not terribly so (and I used more hops at flame out). I think there comes a time when dry hops will reach their peak in floral nose, and past that it doesn't make much difference.

I've dry hopped 3 or 4 times. . .but never for 5 weeks.

I don't dry hop often because it usually - in my experience - imparts a distinct taste as well as aroma. I don't regard it was one of those things that will definately improve your beer. For IPA's i'll usually use one ounce for a week.

A week is probably all you need.

And I agree, it requires the right style of beer to make good use of dry hopping.

Generally a week. If it needs more, I start over with more hops. I left the hops in one batch for 6 weeks & it became rather grassy.

I dryhop for about a week and a half. Then spend 2 days trying to get the smell out of my carboy after I bottle.

I dry hop for two weeks, sometimes three. I agree with Biermann on this; I think after a certain time, the dry hops hit a point of diminishing return.

So what happens then? Do the hops re-absorb the aromas they are putting out? Or are you guys just tasting/smelling a beer thats aging in a secondary? Don't hops have a tendency to mellow with time anyways?

Exo said:

So what happens then? Do the hops re-absorb the aromas they are putting out? Or are you guys just tasting/smelling a beer thats aging in a secondary? Don't hops have a tendency to mellow with time anyways?

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I think the key here is that the hop aroma (and flavors) come from aromatic compounds that are somewhat volatile and degrade rather easily. I don't really think its a problem of being resorbed, but rather dissipation and degradation. If you leave a hop flower out for quite awhile, you'll notice that it will have near zero aroma. The same thing happens in your fermenter.

So I decided to taist of of the beers in question and it did still have some lingering pinetree smell that was so overpowering when I was bottling but not nearly as strong. It has been about 5 weeks since bottling the brew and I figure another 5-8 weeks will deffenetly help mellow things out.

I found the recipe if anyone is interested
http://www.homebrew.com/pdfs/recipes/extract-recipes/Arrogant BastardExt.pdf