scottland
Well-Known Member
It's experiment time. Common convention is that the alcohol in beer acts as a solvent and helps dissolve the hop oils and resins into the beer giving more hop aroma. I've found the opposite.
My pale ales take on these wonderfully strong, perfume-like aromas from dry hops (5.0% ABV beers). I can add 1-2oz to a 5gal batch, and get a big, punchy hop aroma.
My DIPAs and recently my 20% ABV 120 min clone take much, much more dry hops to achieve the same result. My 120min clone was dry hopped 3 separate times with a total of 6oz of dry hops(5gal batch), and it still doesn't have a 'strong' hop aroma. Why?
Does alcohol actually act as a solvent for hop oils? If so, do the hop oils get bound up in the alcohol, and aren't released to be smelled? Because I haven't seen any scientific research on this, I'm going to do a couple experiments.
I do know: I get better dry hop aroma the warmer I dry-hop. 70* is better than 40*.
So my plan is to steep some hops in: Water, a Pale Ale, and an IPA and see what happens. I'll do a control for each one and see which takes on the most hop aroma from the same amount of hops.
Where I'm going with this is, maybe it's beneficial to make a cold-steeped hop tea and add that to DIPAs rather than dry hops. To be continued.....
My pale ales take on these wonderfully strong, perfume-like aromas from dry hops (5.0% ABV beers). I can add 1-2oz to a 5gal batch, and get a big, punchy hop aroma.
My DIPAs and recently my 20% ABV 120 min clone take much, much more dry hops to achieve the same result. My 120min clone was dry hopped 3 separate times with a total of 6oz of dry hops(5gal batch), and it still doesn't have a 'strong' hop aroma. Why?
Does alcohol actually act as a solvent for hop oils? If so, do the hop oils get bound up in the alcohol, and aren't released to be smelled? Because I haven't seen any scientific research on this, I'm going to do a couple experiments.
I do know: I get better dry hop aroma the warmer I dry-hop. 70* is better than 40*.
So my plan is to steep some hops in: Water, a Pale Ale, and an IPA and see what happens. I'll do a control for each one and see which takes on the most hop aroma from the same amount of hops.
Where I'm going with this is, maybe it's beneficial to make a cold-steeped hop tea and add that to DIPAs rather than dry hops. To be continued.....