Hop aroma

G'day mates,

I cannot seem to bring out that glorious hop aroma one would find when drinking an IPA or pale ale, etc. I have used about 1 oz of whole hops before but it soaks a bit of my brew and I like to keep it at 5.5 gallons. Would using pellets be better? Maybe it depends on PH or conditioning temp? Any help is loved.

Cheers

Your dry hop amount is low. Try 2-3 oz. Pellets will soak up less of your beer and may give you a stronger aroma.

Fantastic. Thanks for your response!

You definitely need more than an ounce to dry hop. In addition you really want to be doing a lot of late boil additions as well. In some of my IPAs and pales there will be large amounts of 15, 10, 5 and 0 minute additions and then 2-3 oz dry hops.

duboman said:

You definitely need more than an ounce to dry hop. In addition you really want to be doing a lot of late boil additions as well. In some of my IPAs and pales there will be large amounts of 15, 10, 5 and 0 minute additions and then 2-3 oz dry hops.

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That is my schedule for any IPA as well, with the 60 minute bittering addition of course. If you're really concerned about volumes you can worry less about hop trub if you put them in a bag that goes in.

I agree with the other Gents. That is a low amount in whole hops. They are not as strong. One piece of advice if I may. If u put pellets in a bag and in a carboy you will play hell trying to get them out on clean up. They swell and won't make it out the neck. Maybe someone knows something I don't but I always use a bucket for dry hopping.

Mhobs126,

That also is a concern I have. I use a glass carboy and haven't tried to bother stuffing a bag of whole hops in there for dry hopping. Thanks for the advice about the pellets.

I will try the gents post up top about a lot of late boil and more in the secondary. I assume (safely) that 3-4 oz of low aroma hops is necessary for late additions?

You can also try "hop bursting." This is where you skip the 60 minute bittering addition and all of your IBUs come from late additions. Obviously this means you're adding a lot more hops since 1 oz of 10 AA hops at 60 minutes get you approximately 55 IBU, but you'd need 2-3/4 oz of it at 10 minutes to get the same IBU (Tinseth).

I struggle to get hop aroma as well.
In our homebrew club's seasonal competition, I always get the lowest scores on hop aroma.

I typically do about 2oz at flameout, and 2oz of dry hop pellets. This, of course, in addition to 60, 30, & 10.
I've also tried wort hopping, but I couldn't tell that it added much more aroma, mostly flavor.
My question is, which is better for aroma, late additions or dry hop additions?

I've also considered using a bucket as a secondary fermenter, and tossing in up to 5oz of whole leaf hops in a bag.

Late addition hopping I would think can dissipate during the fermentation process called "scrubbing". As well as the fine advice I have on this thread, a buddy of mine suggested up to 3 oz for late addition (some aroma will survive the fermentation) and 3-4 oz for dry hopping. FWH is only a flavour balancer.

I would thing that an oz of whole hops could suck up roughly a litre or two of wort so increasing your batch size to 5.5 gallons should be okay of using 4 oz of whole hops. After all, imagine how many hops commercial breweries use for their IPA aroma! Side note: look into hop extract to, might be more realistic for us.

A few tips I use with good effects:
1. Dry hop with pellets
2. Use 2oz or more
3. Use in a bag that floats (so the hop particles don't sink into the yeast cake)
4. Squeeze that bag of hop juice out into your beer when you remove it.
5. Dry hop at room/ fermentation temperatures.

Also, use hops that have a strong, noticeable aroma. I dry hopped with 3 total oz of Bravo, Sterling, and Cascade, and it wasn't nearly as aromatic as 1oz of Cascade and 1oz of Centennial. Use the classic American "C" hops plus Simcoe, Amarillo, and Summit.

Great set of tips GlenF!