6oz Dry Hop - No aroma in sample - plent of aroma from trub

From what I can tell, I did everything right. So I'm extremely confused and frustrated. I've read all the primers, followed all instructions and studied all I could and still had problems. Please read whole post.

The recipe is based on ZD but changed quite a bit.

Malt base is similar.

13.25 lbs 2-Row
1.5lbs Munich 10
0.5lbs Melanoidin
0.5lbs CaraFoam
0.5lbs Crystal 60

0.5oz Warrior FWH
1.25oz Citra 10 min
1.25oz Citra 5 min
1.25oz Citra 0 min
1.25oz Citra whirlpool 20 mins
3.6oz Citra Dry Hop 5 days
2.4oz Cascade Dry Hop 3 days

Water profile:
Ca 128, Mg 0, Na 8, Cl 68, SO4 222

OG: 1.071
FG: 1.014

The Yeast Bay Vermont Ale yeast used

Pitched a healthy starter (1.7L) and fermented around 66F and ramped to 70 towards end to clean up yeast off flavours until day 10. Day 10 sample at 1.018 and first dry hop addition added. Day 12 sample was at FG and added 2nd dry hop addition. Day 15 no off flavours detected in sample other than some boozyness which is obvious for a 7.5%. Began cold crashing to 50 overnight then down to 35. I'm hoping that boozyness mellows out in the bottle conditioning process.

So there's all the info. Problem I'm having is that I'm currently cold crashing and the sample I took on day 15 was extremely un-hoppy aroma wise. Like none whatsoever. Lots of interesting flavour, fruity, sweet, boozy, smooth bitterness. Just zero hop aroma at all.

Question is this:

Should a pre-bottling sample have a ton of hop aroma? Or is that brought out by the carbonation and bottling process? Obviously fermenting in a bucket there's quite a bit of oxygen leaching so that is a definite possibility but to lose ALL hop aroma? That seems insane.

Any thoughts? Will this still have a ton of hop aroma out of the bottle because of oils in the beer? Or no?

UPDATE: Bottled this last night. The sample still had minimal to no aroma. When I was cleaning my fermenter with hot water, BOOM. My whole bathroom all of a sudden smelled like Citra and Cascade made a baby. After rinsing my fermenter I let it sit in a separate room until I can get home tonight to soak it. Went into the spare room this morning and the whole room smelled like hop heaven. I guess the question has morphed - did the hops not have long enough to absorb? Both times were done at 66-ish degrees F. I know most commercials are done at 55, so I don't think it was too low. Also, please don't suggest moving to kegging. SWMBO already is unhappy with how much I spent this year. Can't justify another $1k right now. Besides, I find bottling relaxing. I genuinely don't believe that oxygen is the problem, given the explosion of smell during rinsing/cleaning.

Any thoughts? I posted this in General as well, but no real responses yet.

Were the hops in pretty good shape? i have had strange effects of minimal hop aroma sometimes as well. I was also using the Conan strain. Did you pitch the full starter? had the starter fermented out completely and was dormant for awhile? does it have a strange flavor, like kind of cloying bitterness or lingering on the tongue? it could be partially a fermentation issue. i am still trying to figure out why my beer went awry as well.

stickyfinger said:

Were the hops in pretty good shape? i have had strange effects of minimal hop aroma sometimes as well. I was also using the Conan strain. Did you pitch the full starter? had the starter fermented out completely and was dormant for awhile? does it have a strange flavor, like kind of cloying bitterness or lingering on the tongue? it could be partially a fermentation issue. i am still trying to figure out why my beer went awry as well.

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Thanks for the response.

Hops were in very good shape. Both fresh from nitro flushed bags. Just frozen. I pitched maybe 250ml of a 2L starter. Starter was dormant for maybe a few hours. The sample from the secondary prior to cold crashing seemed more cloying that is for certain. Drinking a sample from the crashed secondary it was the bitterness and flavour I expected (juicy, fruity, smooth, malty, sweet, bitter, and peach/apricot in there as well) but there was still something in the background (lingering might be a good word) that I was attributing to booziness. I was chalking it up to a 7.5% beer. It's certainly possible that it's the yeast, but I was very particular with this batch regarding temps etc.

Very interesting to hear you've had what sound to be very similar problems.

Yes, the other similarity b/w my batch that failed and yours is that mine contained a good amount of maltier-style malts. It had munich malt and honey malt. I thought the maltiness was too much for a hoppy beer, and I am wondering if it worked to kill my hop flavor somehow. It seems crazy though. I asked about the yeast/starter, b/c on that batch I chose to pitch a slurry I had from my freezer without pouring off anything, or getting it going beforehand. It also had a ton of hops in it from the previous batch, so maybe that hurt me. I don't know what to say. I'll probably dump my mediocre batch and try again sometime.

stickyfinger said:

Yes, the other similarity b/w my batch that failed and yours is that mine contained a good amount of maltier-style malts. It had munich malt and honey malt. I thought the maltiness was too much for a hoppy beer, and I am wondering if it worked to kill my hop flavor somehow. It seems crazy though. I asked about the yeast/starter, b/c on that batch I chose to pitch a slurry I had from my freezer without pouring off anything, or getting it going beforehand. It also had a ton of hops in it from the previous batch, so maybe that hurt me. I don't know what to say. I'll probably dump my mediocre batch and try again sometime.

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Did any of the "funk" go away after being in bottle/keg and clearing/conditioning?

See if you can identify that off flavour in the background.
the cloying descripter suggests diacetyl, which will hide hop aroma and pretty much anythinggood about the beer, and it will be overly sweet.

bonecitybrewco said:

Did any of the "funk" go away after being in bottle/keg and clearing/conditioning?

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it hasn't been there long, but usually a beer like this should be amazing right away, so i don't have much hope. i'll keep it around for awhile before dumping it to see if it tastes ok. it's been my experience that beers really get a huge amount better after aging. yes, malty beers can taste smoother and such and better, but a beer like this should be awesome right away.

crusader1612 said:

See if you can identify that off flavour in the background.
the cloying descripter suggests diacetyl, which will hide hop aroma and pretty much anythinggood about the beer, and it will be overly sweet.

Click to expand...

interesting idea. i don't think it is diacetyl. there could be some other off-products from fermentation that are interfering though. i did notice that as soon as i kegged the beer, it lost some of it's hoppiness. that happens occasionally. it seems like the hoppiness drops out of some beer for some reason after carbonation. the beer is also much much clearer since kegging.

Kegging is the way forward for hoppy beers. (I know you said you can't) but it really does help maintain that hop character for longer.

Hops do drop off quickly generally. so it really depends.

the Overly sweet descriptor really reminded me of a recent Pale ale I did - full of the big D. no butter or popcorn, just cloyingly sweet. (Took me ages to pick out what the issue was, but a buddy is a pro brewer, and picked it straight away) It also was way too bitter considering the hoppingrate, which helped us to pick it up

Another possible option, as you are bottling, is oxidation?
the beer will darken over time, and is another descriptor of losing aroma to a bland almost cardboard taste. Maybe sherry?

the key is to identify the off flavour your talking about, and go from there.
(ask your friends to help you out)

You will always have hop debris in the trub if you dry hop, so a good aroma there is not an issue. Hop debris will stick to yeast - how clear was the beer when you dry hopped?

What was your dry hop technique? Did you use a bag or just throw in cones or pellets?

Carbonation should help with the aroma as well as letting the beer warm up a bit too. Try it 55F and it could be totally different than 40 F.

That said infection or diacetyl could counteract the aroma.

cshamilton said:

You will always have hop debris in the trub if you dry hop, so a good aroma there is not an issue. Hop debris will stick to yeast - how clear was the beer when you dry hopped?

What was your dry hop technique? Did you use a bag or just throw in cones or pellets?

Carbonation should help with the aroma as well as letting the beer warm up a bit too. Try it 55F and it could be totally different than 40 F.

That said infection or diacetyl could counteract the aroma.

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Thanks. Appreciate the insight.

Beer still had some krausen left when I added first dry hop (.004 before FG) and just had hop debris on top when I added 2nd dry hop but was certainly at FG at that point.

I added pellets directly to fermenter. No bags or anything else.

Dry hop additions were made at room temperature as far as I remember.

The only time I've had this happen is when I added 3oz to the primary fermentor a little prematurely. I waited 5-7 days (can't remember exactly), when I should have waited longer. I don't usually test FG until I keg, so my assumption is that FG hadn't been reached when I threw the dry hops in so they either attached to the active yeast and dropped too quickly or the aroma was pushed out by the off-gassing. I have no scientific evidence to back up either of those conclusions, just assumptions and anecdotal evidence.

never assume too much until you've carbonated the beer and it's at serving temp! this may indeed be a case of RDWHB. another you could do is to dry hop in stages. half the amount for 2 to 4 days and then the other half after. the beer can't soak up the flavors if they're in the middle of a trub/hop cake.

on another note, kegging isn't a $1k investment. if you really want to nail that intense hop flavor, it's most certainly the way to go

crusader1612 said:

Kegging is the way forward for hoppy beers. (I know you said you can't) but it really does help maintain that hop character for longer.

Hops do drop off quickly generally. so it really depends.

the Overly sweet descriptor really reminded me of a recent Pale ale I did - full of the big D. no butter or popcorn, just cloyingly sweet. (Took me ages to pick out what the issue was, but a buddy is a pro brewer, and picked it straight away) It also was way too bitter considering the hoppingrate, which helped us to pick it up

Another possible option, as you are bottling, is oxidation?
the beer will darken over time, and is another descriptor of losing aroma to a bland almost cardboard taste. Maybe sherry?

the key is to identify the off flavour your talking about, and go from there.
(ask your friends to help you out)

Click to expand...

TheHairyHop said:

never assume too much until you've carbonated the beer and it's at serving temp! this may indeed be a case of RDWHB. another you could do is to dry hop in stages. half the amount for 2 to 4 days and then the other half after. the beer can't soak up the flavors if they're in the middle of a trub/hop cake.

on another note, kegging isn't a $1k investment. if you really want to nail that intense hop flavor, it's most certainly the way to go

Click to expand...

True in three ways:

1) my beer that had a clinging bitterness has smoothed out nicely after a week or so in the keg. it's so good that I am going to keg hop with 3 oz of precious hops

2) kegging is not that expensive, maybe half of that if you get a brand new freezer

3) kegging will deliver the best possible IPA to your lips from your home brewery if you do it right.

With that much hop addition - you should have had aroma explosion - even in your FG sample.

The cascade probably could have soaked longer than 3 days. But the citra was in there long enough.

I've done pale ales with half that hop bill and had amazing hop aroma from day 1 to empty keg about 30 days later.

So - oxidation? Infection (doesn't look like it from your description)? imbalance of hops/malts/etc...? Not sure. Doesn't seem like it.

Yeast strain? I've never used Vermont Ale strain. For hoppy stuff I stick to WLP001 or San Diego Super Strain. I have used WLP002 (English Ale strain) with great happy hoppy aroma.

Water profile? Your looks pretty good for a hoppy beer. Did you build it from RO/Distilled water? Or are you using tap? If you are using tap, how long ago was your water quality tested? Tap water can change radically over time. If RO water - where are you buying it? A machine or a water shop? Machine's rely on small filter systems that need regular maintenance. If the machine hasn't been maintained in a while - the actual water can be quite far from "zero profile".

Boil time? I mean total. I boil for 75mins minimum on all my batches.

Brulosopher did some great work on hop aroma and dry hop techniques. You should definitely check that out.