Dry hopping
- Thread starter Zman3
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Your first dry hop? Great way to add a lot of aroma and some extra hop flavor.
1. First you got to make sure it is fermented out, about 2 weeks should do it, no less, but could be longer depending on your yeast and temperatures.
Then decide on how long you want to condition it further before bottling, perhaps another week, maybe 2 weeks. Then count back from your scheduled bottling day, the number of days you want to dry hop. If it so happens to be 7 days instead of 5 the recipe calls for you'll be fine. A little longer will extract a little more aroma. Don't go way overboard on dry hopping time. Some have reported grassy notes if left for more than a few weeks. I never noticed anything bad after 2-3 weeks of dry hopping.
There is no need to rack to a secondary at any time. But just in case you really, really want to, do it when you start the dry hopping, to allow the beer to condition out for as long as it can on the yeast cake. Again there is no benefit to a dedicated secondary, just a larger risk of oxidation and infection.
You could cold crash the beer (refrigerator) for 2 days right before bottling to drop more of the suspended yeast and hop bits out and clear it more.*
If you dry hopped "loose," without using a hop bag, when racking the finished beer to your bottling bucket, tie a sanitized and shaken out very fine mesh hop bag to the bottom of your racking cane. Transfer the beer carefully and slowly not to suck up too much hops, trub, and yeast.
Enjoy!
* There is some talk that cold crashing removes some aroma and flavor from beer, particularly those from dry hopping. The flavor/aroma molecules are suspect to clinging to yeast and hop matter and drop out with the cold crash. I've not seen any official or conclusive reports or research on this.
1. First you got to make sure it is fermented out, about 2 weeks should do it, no less, but could be longer depending on your yeast and temperatures.
Then decide on how long you want to condition it further before bottling, perhaps another week, maybe 2 weeks. Then count back from your scheduled bottling day, the number of days you want to dry hop. If it so happens to be 7 days instead of 5 the recipe calls for you'll be fine. A little longer will extract a little more aroma. Don't go way overboard on dry hopping time. Some have reported grassy notes if left for more than a few weeks. I never noticed anything bad after 2-3 weeks of dry hopping.
There is no need to rack to a secondary at any time. But just in case you really, really want to, do it when you start the dry hopping, to allow the beer to condition out for as long as it can on the yeast cake. Again there is no benefit to a dedicated secondary, just a larger risk of oxidation and infection.
You could cold crash the beer (refrigerator) for 2 days right before bottling to drop more of the suspended yeast and hop bits out and clear it more.*
If you dry hopped "loose," without using a hop bag, when racking the finished beer to your bottling bucket, tie a sanitized and shaken out very fine mesh hop bag to the bottom of your racking cane. Transfer the beer carefully and slowly not to suck up too much hops, trub, and yeast.
Enjoy!
* There is some talk that cold crashing removes some aroma and flavor from beer, particularly those from dry hopping. The flavor/aroma molecules are suspect to clinging to yeast and hop matter and drop out with the cold crash. I've not seen any official or conclusive reports or research on this.
