Since I've started scanning through IPA recipes, I've noticed many that do require dry hopping and many that don't. It made me wonder what the reasons are for not dry hopping? Surely all IPAs would benefit from it or am I missing something?
Do not want dry hop if you're trying to make an IPA with little hop aroma.
If you don't dry hop it, it's not an IPA.
Dry hopping is the best way to get that distinctive, in-your-face aroma as you bring the glass to your lips. It's characteristic of the IPA style and therefore, in my opinion, dry hopping is mandatory.
A follow on question: I'm just brainstorming here and thinking towards the future and working out some logic behind designing a recipe - Let's say for the sake of argument an IPA recipe consisted of 1oz Amarillo, 1oz Centennial, 1oz Nugget, 1oz Simcoe. If I was to dry hop this batch also, is it a bad idea to use different hops or should I use one of/combination of the four that were used in the boil? If I dry hopped with say Citra and Cascade, would the results be weird and bad?
Let's say your last hop addition into the boil is 1oz simcoe at 2 min. This is the aroma you will be looking for. It would be weird to add a completely different hop to dry hop. You are basically changing the aroma in secondary instead of pushing it higher. Some recipes call to dry hop a combination of hops also, but it is because they work well together. I hope I formulated it clear enough!
In general, yes.
Let's say your last hop addition into the boil is 1oz simcoe at 2 min. This is the aroma you will be looking for. It would be weird to add a completely different hop to dry hop. You are basically changing the aroma in secondary instead of pushing it higher. Some recipes call to dry hop a combination of hops also, but it is because they work well together. I hope I formulated it clear enough!
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If you don't dry hop it, it's not an IPA.
I completely disagree. While there are hops that don't compliment each other, and shouldn't be combined, there's no reason you can't dry hop with different hops. Personally, I think that combination sounds great. All of those hops compliment each other, and you can get more complexity by dry hopping with different hops.
There is a point, however, where you're using too many different hops and the flavors just become muddled. You'll have to experiment to find out where that is, since it is usually recipe and hop specific.
The original India pale ales were dry hopped not for the aroma, but for the preservative qualities of the hops; the aroma was just a bonus. After six months at sea, it really wouldn't have been an IPA without the dry hopping - it would have been malt vinegar, or something else completely non-potable.
I detest a good "Well, actually..." as much as the next guy, but if you believe Mitch Steele in his "IPA" book, this is actually an urban legend. George Hodgson of the Bow Brewery was successfully shipping plain old porter from England to India for many years before he started shipping IPAs. And even then, the IPAs were well-hopped not to help them survive the journey at sea, but rather because that's simply how the British aristocracy in India preferred it.
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