Dry hopping vs. adding at flame out

Last night I did a partial boil extract and got a bit drunk while doing it. Because of my drunkness I accidentally added all my LME at the start of the boil instead of doing a late addition. Doing this messed with my IBU I had calculated perfectly. Right after I realized my mistake I recalculated in Beersmith and figured if I threw the rest of my hops in for the rest of the boil, I'd get my IBU's back close to where I wanted them. To do this I had to sacrifice the hops for my 15 min addition and flame out addition. I thought this would be worth it since I have only one chance to get the bitterness and I could always just dry hop later for some more aroma.

So my question is, what really the difference in aroma/flavor between adding hops right at the end of the boil vs. dry hopping?

This is a good question! I'm interested in the answer, too.

There are two factors: extraction and boil-off. A flavor add gives time to extract almost all hop oils, but the lighter ones are lost. Dry hopping only extracts the very lightest oils, but there's no boil-off.

Dry hopping is NOT a substitute for flavor/aroma and flameout adds. I learned this the hard way, years ago. Just like chocolate sprinkles on your cupcake do not make up for a lack of frosting. You can boil hops 5 minutes and add the tea to your fermenter. Read about "hop tea" for more info. "French press" is another good search term.

And you wanted to be our latex salesman??

Pickngrin said:

And you wanted to be our latex salesman??

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Haha, well played. I forgot my SN was a seinfeld reference.

Thanks! Glad it didn't fall on deaf ears/fingers.