I purchased both the leaf and pellet hops from morebeer.com at the same time with the intent that they should be as close to each other as possible, and I would say they were both very fresh. I used a mesh bag in a 1.5 L glass bottle. Since the bottle narrows at the top and I filled the bottles to within an inch from the top, the bags stayed submerged in the beer. I wish the pellet hops had given me more flavor because they stay fresher longer, don't suck up as much beer, and are easier to get out of the bottle at the end, but my experience with that first batch is that the leaf hops result in more flavor. I will say that if I sniff the hops, the pellets have more aroma, and maybe there isn't much of a difference in aroma in the finished beer, but I drink a beer, I don't just sit there are smell it. Aroma plays into flavor, and I personally only care about flavor, so I don't judge aroma outside of flavor. I also dry hop for 7 days. I've done 10 days and even 2 weeks in the past, but 7 days worked great, and I will say the dry hop flavor on this last IPA was beyond anything I have tasted out there, people thought it had citrus in it.