Dry Hopping Double IPA

I've got my first big beer finishing up primary. Just want to share the recipe and get some comments before transferring to dry hop.

I threw this together based on some other recipes and tweaked it to use the ingredients I had on hand. I used the brew-in-a-bag method (gotta motivate to built that MLT).

Avalanche Double IPA (PM)
4 Gallon Batch

6# 2-Row Pale Malt
8oz Crystal 10
4oz Crystal 60
8oz Wheat Malt
3# Extra Light DME (Late addition - 15 min)
1# Sucanat (Late addition - 15 min)

1tsp Gypsum (Mash)
1tsp Irish Moss (10 min)
2tsp Yeast Nutrient (10 min)

1oz Cascade 5.9% (60 min)
.5oz Chinook 13% (60 min)
2.5oz Cascade 5.9% (Continuous Hop for 50 min)
.25oz Amarillo 8% (15 min)
.25oz Amarillo 8% (5 min)

.5oz Cascade (Flame Out)
.5oz Chinook (Flame Out)
.5oz Amarillo (Flame Out)

2 Packages US-05 (Re-hydrated)

1oz Cascade (Dry Hop)
1oz Amarillo (Dry Hop)

All the hops are pellet form, and I used what I had of American and English 2-Row to make up the 6# Pale Malt. I also used about 5.5oz Crystal 60 because that's what I had left from a previous batch and figured, what the hell.

I undershot my mash temp and ended up at 148*F rather than 150*F for 75 minutes. So, I transferred the grain bag into the sparge water early and let it mash for 15 minutes at ~155*F and then skipped mash-out. As my first attempt at a high gravity brew I tried to be extra cautious all the way through.

Chilled with ice bath and IC to 66*, took a sample, transferred to 5 gallon glass carboy and pitched 2 packs of re-hydrated US-05. My only means of aeration is shaking, so I covered the carboy with sanitized foil and shook to aerate every so often for the first 4 - 5 hours. I don't know if that was a mistake, but I figured at that stage it probably wouldn't do any harm. I attached a big blow-off tube before bed, and in the morning there was a nice layer of krausen and lots of blow-off activity.

OG: 1.093 (Woo-Hoo!)

I wanted to ferment in the 66* range, but at the height of activity I couldn't keep it from getting up to 70* using the AC in my guest room. I figured 70* wasn't way to hot so I just cranked up the AC rather than rigging a swamp cooler and got it back down to 66* - 67* by the time I got home from work the next day.

Yesterday blow-off had slowed way down and the krausen had fallen back completely. So, today I took my first gravity reading (8 days in) and got a reading of 1.017! Right on target. Now, I'm just afraid that it's not done and will finish too dry.

The sample was very promising as well. Great orangy-copper color somewhat reminiscent of 120-minute IPA and fantastic hop aroma. The flavors were a bit harsh of course, but everything I was looking for was present.

Overall I would say that things seem to be going TOO well at this stage. This will be my first attempt at dry hopping. My tentative plan is to transfer after 14 days in primary (assuming gravity is stable) and then dry hop with 1 oz each Cascade and Amarillo pellets for 7 - 14 days and then bottle. I would love some advice on the quantities, duration and process. From what I have read I plan to just rack onto the pellets in secondary and then use a muslin bag on my auto-siphon as a hop filter when I rack again for bottling.

Thanks for any comments/criticism.

Your process for dryhopping is exactly what I do, however instead of using a bag over the tip of my racking cane I cold crash it and use gelatin finings, let it sit for another two days and then rack to a keg.

You could try dry hopping it like Pliney the Elder is. Take 1/2 oz each Cascade & Amarillo, dry hop for 10-14 days, remove those, then take the remaining 1/2 oz of each and dry hop for another 10-14 days. It will give you big Aroma. It's not exactly the same , but the same idea.

Just a thought

Thanks for the input. I've got a little time, so I want to take in all my options before I go at it. Glad to know that I'm not way off base. It's amazing what good research will do.

sounds delicious

I am in the middle of an IIPA as well. It was racked to secondary this past monday. the original gravity was also 1.093 and stopped at 1.020. At racking, the taste of alcohol was very present so this is going to need a little time to mellow out a bit. My new plan for dry-hopping is to leave it in secondary for about a month to bulk age, then i am going to dry-hop for 14 days before bottling. Dry-hopping will fade over time, so i don't want to bottle this too early and have it sit around aging and lose all that aroma. not sure how it will all come out, just thought i would volunteer my .02...

I would do what Yankeehill suggested. Take a half ounce of each type of hop and rack on top of those and wait five days then throw the rest in.

I drop hop with whole hops in a bag so I am able to take them out after the 5-7 days and then put fresh ones in.

There's a good brew strong episode on dry hopping. What I gathered was you don't want to leave it on the dry hops much longer than a week at a time, and after 2 weeks you risk getting some of the grassy taste.

So if you want to dry hop for 2 weeks, you can split the hops in two batches and do it a week at a time.

If you dry hop with pellets, you should probably rack the beer off them after a week or so, then add the rest of the dry hops

I think I'm going to do the two addition method. Racking the extra time to get the beer off the first addition will give me a good opportunity to sample the overall progress. Also I think it will be a good experience to see the results from each addition for future reference.

I had my IIPA in primary for 3 weeks, then boiled a nylon mesh bag, put my 3oz of hops in it, opened the primary, put the bag in, closed it, and let sit for another week. Turned out great, and surprisingly clear. Smells awesome too.

I'd go with 3-4 oz of dry hopping. I dry hopped an IPA of similar gravity with only 2 oz and wish I had done more.