Dry Hop for 3 Days ... yes or no?

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RCBIV

RCBIV

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Simple question: Do you think dry hopping for three days gets optimal aroma results?

I've done it the last few brews and I've achieved some great aroma. I have two brews going right now (a split batch of pale ale with two different yeasts) and I am about to dry hop today. I am just curious if I should keep with my 3-day technique or if someone out there has a convincing argument against it.

I am using pellets, also.
 
I tend to go longer. I would suggest splitting a batch up. Maybe move to 5 @ 1 gallon and try various lengths of time.
 
Yes, IMO, 3 days is long enough to get great hop aroma.
 
brycelarson said:
I tend to go longer. I would suggest splitting a batch up. Maybe move to 5 @ 1 gallon and try various lengths of time.
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Liking this suggestion ^^^^^.

I will often split batches and try different yeasts in each or maybe ferment one a little warmer than the other. If adding oak, bourbon, etc to a beer, I usually split the batch and dose 1/2. From there I can either keep the batches separate, blend back together, or dose the 2nd batch a different way.

But to the OP, I used to dry hop 7 days just because dry hopping on a Sunday and kegging the following Sunday was easy and convenient. I've tried to move to 5 days. Toss the hops in on Monday and keg Saturday AM.

The president of my home brew club is a brewer at Manayunk Brewery in Philly. He claims dry hopping should never be done over 3 days.
 
There are some great hop experiments out there that talk about how 3 days is usually more than enough and the typical lengthened dry hop does get some extra but at a very limited gain. I prefer 4-5 days...I will go 7 if I cold crash for two days. Up to you. If it works, why change it?
 
I've always done 7 days, but if 3 has worked for you already, there seems no point in messing with it.


Sent from my iThingy using a series of tubes.
 
I have only done 3 days at 65-67 degrees because it has resulted in greater hop aroma than I have ever had from any commercial beer.

Experimenting is always good though. Perfecting your system is invaluable.
 
3-4 days here in the upper 60's.

That's plenty of time to extract the hop aroma goodness. I don't much care for the grassy flavors you can sometimes get by dry hopping longer.
 
I prefer 5-7 days at fermentation temps but I don't think there is a huge difference from 3 days. It all depends on if you rouse or just let it sit on top. I have done alot of experiments with it. One of the weirdest was crash cooling until clear and racking then raising the temps back up and dryhopping. Not earth shattering though. The results at cooler temps were weak but I did like keg hopping when I had some homegrown to use and never ran into grassy flavors.

These days, with a large whirlpool addition I think you could even omit the dryhop.
 
I dry hop in my kegs and tend to go 2, maybe 3 days at room temp, after which I put put the keg into the kegerator (with the dry hops still inside) to chill, carb, and serve. I leave them in until the keg kicks. Never had an issue with the 'grassy flavors' one often hears about, but that's just me. I get fantastic, lasting aroma from this technique - at least in my (and my friends') opinion.

But as has been said above, you gotta do what gives you the result that you dig the most. So if you like 3 days, then the answer to your question is definitely yes.

Enjoy the brew.
 
Curious why people only dry hop for so little time. I was under the impression that upwards of 2 weeks is usually appropriate. Are folks finding that after 7 days it's starting to get too grassy?
 
Hopper5000 said:
Curious why people only dry hop for so little time. I was under the impression that upwards of 2 weeks is usually appropriate. Are folks finding that after 7 days it's starting to get too grassy?
Click to expand...

I think it may depend on the hop variety. I got some fairly strong grassy flavor once with Cascade after 5 days (upper 60's) that took about an extra month to mellow out, so I'm probably a bit more conservative about it now than some folks.
 
From what I read about the big boys, Firestone Walker, Alchemist. They dry hop for no more than 4. There is a link somewhere around here that states 24hrs is all you need to get the most out of a dry hop.
 
Hopper5000 said:
Curious why people only dry hop for so little time. I was under the impression that upwards of 2 weeks is usually appropriate. Are folks finding that after 7 days it's starting to get too grassy?
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It seems that the "older" advice is 1-2 weeks (most often 2). However, more recently the general consensus has shifted towards a shorter period being favorable. Many big commercial IPAs have several dry hop-additions at different intervals..

There's an excellent master thesis by Peter Wolfe on the subject of dry-hopping that generally concludes that very short dry-hopping times (hours) are most ideal for aroma and flavor.. (But an important note is that their experiments are not completely comparable with a home-brewing setup - e.g. they continuously agitate their "wort")
 
That's pretty interesting to me. I pretty much always leave my dry hops in for 10-12 days, a couple of those days being a cold crash usually. I have placed a couple of times in comps with IPAs using this method but if I don't have to wait that long then that would be beneficial. I guess I am trying to say that I haven't seen a lot of negative aspects of leaving it in for up to 2 weeks. Although these brews usually don't actually get entered or tasted in the comps for a month or two so the "off flavors" one might get, e.g. grassy, would probably have faded by then.

I have been experimenting more with 0min additions on lighter beers like hoppy pales and such, vs dry hopping. However, haven't tried this method yet with IPAs.
 
Yes. 3-5 days works very well and what I do consistently. The majority of the aromatic compounds have been extracted by this point; going longer just allows the aroma you are trying to add to start declining (and allegedly the vegetal/grassy to develop). Since I've kegged, it has been interesting to see how much aroma is lost so quickly.
 
LovesIPA said:
According to John Kimmich (of The Alchemist, brewer of Heady Topper), you should dry-hop for 4 or 5 days, no less and no more.

It's somewhere in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdfySDN2mF0 but I wasn't able to find it quickly.
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Yeah, he says "no more than five...no shorter than three...haha"

Here is a summary of the dry hop experiment:

http://inhoppursuit.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-aroma-oil-faster-dry-hopsters-holy.html

Take note, they are using experimental pellets. Still, the tests states that people prefered ONE DAY over 7. Science says that most of what you get can take as little as 3 hours, but we dont have access to those pellets, so 3 is a nice meeting ground.

I try to aim for 3-5. If something gets in the way, a week is still fine by me. I don't get the grassiness people talk. I still feel that has more to do with the yeast, malt, and process than the hops itself. I have no proof other than a yeast issue in a couple hoppy pale ales that picked it up.
 
So for those of you who cold crash, are you counting the days of cold crashing in your days of dry hopping? For example, let's say you put the hops in on Monday, begin the cold crash on Thursday, and bottle/keg on Saturday. Would you call this a five day dry hop?
 
mgr_stl said:
So for those of you who cold crash, are you counting the days of cold crashing in your days of dry hopping? For example, let's say you put the hops in on Monday, begin the cold crash on Thursday, and bottle/keg on Saturday. Would you call this a five day dry hop?
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Yes and no...colder temps slow down the dry hopping process. This is why people who keg can toss in hops and get no grassiness over a month or so. I dont always cold crash, but if I do, I usually keep it at room temp for 3-4 days, then crash for 3. I would consider this the same as a 5 day dry hop.
 
1-2 weeks is old school. 3-5 days is new school. Both work. That said, what's omitted from this discussion is the dry hop quantity. If you are using a half pound of dryhops per 5G batch you might consider reducing contact time as there would be a larger potential for grassy flavors to be extracted. When I started brewing in the early 90's, if you would have told me guys would be using 1-2 pounds of hops in 5G of beer I wouldn't believe you...
 
Understood, part of the reason I leave them in for longer also is because the longer they sit the more of the pellet hops drop to the bottom.
 
Yep, there are practical concerns. Not sure if it would be worth it to transfer at 3 days with hops in suspension... I might add a few days for the hops to settle or if life is happening just put it off until I have time to rack it. Back when I used 1272 the dry hops NEVER sank. I hated it. Really messy transfers.
 
Calichusetts said:
Yeah, he says "no more than five...no shorter than three...haha"

Here is a summary of the dry hop experiment:

http://inhoppursuit.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-aroma-oil-faster-dry-hopsters-holy.html

Take note, they are using experimental pellets. Still, the tests states that people prefered ONE DAY over 7. Science says that most of what you get can take as little as 3 hours, but we dont have access to those pellets, so 3 is a nice meeting ground.

I try to aim for 3-5. If something gets in the way, a week is still fine by me. I don't get the grassiness people talk. I still feel that has more to do with the yeast, malt, and process than the hops itself. I have no proof other than a yeast issue in a couple hoppy pale ales that picked it up.
Click to expand...

This is pretty cool but it doesn't seem like it has been published yet, possibly because it's someone's thesis. I understand the logic here but it seems weird that aroma compounds dissipate within hours but I guess it does kind of make sense as if one uses a hop back or a randall then they dissipate fairly quickly as well. In this study they were constantly mixing the hops in the beer which is something that homebrewers don't really do. I know sierra nevada does this with their torpedo's but that's on a commercial level. This study is also very small and only had a panel of 10 people. I dunno if it's really all that reliable. Has anyone tried to repeat the study and results?
 
Hopper5000 said:
This is pretty cool but it doesn't seem like it has been published yet, possibly because it's someone's thesis. I understand the logic here but it seems weird that aroma compounds dissipate within hours but I guess it does kind of make sense as if one uses a hop back or a randall then they dissipate fairly quickly as well. In this study they were constantly mixing the hops in the beer which is something that homebrewers don't really do. I know sierra nevada does this with their torpedo's but that's on a commercial level. This study is also very small and only had a panel of 10 people. I dunno if it's really all that reliable. Has anyone tried to repeat the study and results?
Click to expand...

That is the summary...the complete write up is somewhere else on the web. Just a google away...
 
Ah ok understood, I don't mean to be a dissenter. Obviously the shorter method has worked for a lot of people on this forum. I plan on trying it myself as well. :)
 
I do 24-36 hours at room temp and two days cold.

From what I read, full oil extraction occurs at these times, so I see no reason to keep hops in the beer longer.
 
kharper6 said:
I do 24-36 hours at room temp and two days cold.

From what I read, full oil extraction occurs at these times, so I see no reason to keep hops in the beer longer.
Click to expand...

This. Aroma extraction occurs FAST - possibly within a few hours using pellets.
Depending on your setup you might be interested in letting your hops drop out of suspension. That part of the equation is slightly more tricky and frequently takes several days.
 
Yes i usually go three or four days at a room temperature. But as mentioned experiment is the key
 
RCBIV said:
Simple question: Do you think dry hopping for three days gets optimal aroma results?

I've done it the last few brews and I've achieved some great aroma. I have two brews going right now (a split batch of pale ale with two different yeasts) and I am about to dry hop today. I am just curious if I should keep with my 3-day technique or if someone out there has a convincing argument against it.

I am using pellets, also.
Click to expand...

Fellow brewer, If you are getting the results you want from a three day dry hop with pellet hops, why ask the forum about it? No one will argue with your opinion. After all it is your opinion that counts with your beer. May the beer gods bless you in your endeavors.
 

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