Selecting hops for dry-hop

My first IPA is in the fermenter and I'd like to dry hop it. I'm waiting a few weeks for active fermentation to complete and then I'm gonna stuff the hops into the primary, leave them for a week or 10 days, then rack to a bottling bucket. My questions:

Should I only use hops of the same variety that were used in the boil?

Should I stick to low Alpha Acid hops?

Should I just smell the hops I have available and toss in what I think smells good?

I think it just depends on your recipe, can you post what kind of hops you used in the boil? Depends what you want your aroma to be like. Floral, citrusy, piney, earthy etc. Simcoe is a great dry hop. You could use the same hops that you used at the end of the boil, within the last 10min, since you'll already get some aroma from those hops anyway, might as well amplify them.

Cascade and Centennial are classic for American IPA's, but you have tons of options today. I'm a fan of Amarillo for the grapefruit factor. You can mix a few that compliment each other too. Here's a break down that might help if you want to do something different than your late hop addition(s) - which is a great option too.

http://destroy.net/brewing/hopref-052010.pdf

@bourgeoisbee, thanks I'm sure that list will be handy many many times.

@chapa, the hops in my boil were: 2 oz. Warrior 60 min., 1 oz. Magnum 15 min. and 2 oz. Centennial 2 min.

The hops I have on hand are: 1 oz. Centennial, 1 oz. Magnum, 1 oz. Fuggles, and 1.5 oz. chinook. I figured on the centennial for the same reasons you gave, but I wondered if I could beef up the dry-hop with any of the others.

NWEagle said:

Should I just smell the hops I have available and toss in what I think smells good?

Click to expand...

+1

The delicate aromas that are driven off by the heat of the wort and the off gassing of CO2 during fermentation can be introduced by dry hopping. The smell from the bag is close to what you'll get from dry hopping.

No problem. Nate Smith put it together, so I should give credit where it is due.