Dry Hopping and Bitterness...

Does dry hopping add any significant bitterness? Or is it mostly just aroma? How about hops flavor, does dry hopping flavor the beer much?

Dry hopping adds little to no bitterness. It adds a ton of aroma and a little bit of flavor. They say if you leave it too long it will start to taste grassy but I have never encountered that before and I'll dry hop up to 2 weeks.

rjwhite41 said:

Dry hopping adds little to no bitterness. It adds a ton of aroma and a little bit of flavor. They say if you leave it too long it will start to taste grassy but I have never encountered that before and I'll dry hop up to 2 weeks.

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That's what I figured.. Cool, so I can experiment with dry hopping and not affect the balance then..

I'm making an APA that uses magnum for bittering, Cascade for flavor, and Willamette for aroma.. Should I just use a little more willamette for dry hopping? Or would I typically hold off on the aroma addition and do the dry hopping instead?

What would happen if I used the willamette in the boil for aroma according to the recipe, and then used cascade for dry hopping? Would it hide the willamette or make it irrelevant?

Its my understanding that dryhopping or flameout hopping does add a tiny tiny amount of IBU, but not enough to bother measuring. I recently dry hopped an APA with Citra and I don't think I detect much flavor addition, but boy did it ever give it a tropical fruit/passion fruit aroma. Glad I did it.

mhenry41h said:

Its my understanding that dryhopping or flameout hopping does add a tiny tiny amount of IBU, but not enough to bother measuring. I recently dry hopped an APA with Citra and I don't think I detect much flavor addition, but boy did it ever give it a tropical fruit/passion fruit aroma. Glad I did it.

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Yeah, I just tried dry hopping on my last IPA I made.. It was wonderful.. The citrus flavors and aroma were out of this world... Unfortunately, I ran out of the stuff night before last...

I would still do your normal hop additions with the brew, and then decide which hop to use in the dry hop addition later.

For reference, I just dry hopped an ESB with 1/2oz each of Fuggles and EKG whole hops. I used 1oz of Fuggles at 20 minutes in the wort, and bittered with Target... So, I'll have my base flavor hops there, and have the aroma (and I hope some flavor) from the dry hop additions... I'm just hoping that the dry hop contributions hang around long enough. The batch will be bottled Thursday evening, so it will have the dry hops in it for a full 6 days.

I'm already making plans for the balance of the whole hops I have (EKG and Fuggles) since I have 1.5oz left of each... :rockin:

BTW, the aroma from that combo was AMAZING!!

The longer you dry hop the more flavor you will get from it but it is never a massive amount IME. Your flavor hops in your boil will dominate. When I dry hop I will usually add a little at flameout and 1-2 ounces (or more sometimes) for at least 7 days. Which one's you add will depend on what aroma you want (this is what you should concentrate on when dry hopping). It will dominate any late aroma addition but it won't completely cover it up. It's just like cooking, the underlying flavors add to the overall taste and enjoyment of the dish, not just the dominate flavors.

If one dry hops for a long time, you can get extra bitterness from dry hopping. This is due to polyphenols in the hops. I made an English bitter that called for dry hops in BOTH primary and secondary. This beer was dry hopped for a total of 3 weeks and ended up being way more bitter than expected for the IBU's predicted. These day I try to go no longer than 7 days of dry hopping. The polyphenol levels vary from hop to hop.

Much has been said on this subject. I experienced an explosive increase of IBU in a beer that is in dryhop since last Sunday. I used 1/2 oz Spalter and I can say that it changed an amber ale for an insane IPA.
I could feel increased 10 IBU point

I dry hop in the keg and drunk the first drinkable glass at few hours.

I think if u have hop particles still in suspension you might get an increased bitterness, just as you would if put a hop pellet straight in your mouth. When cleared, there shouldn't be any noticeable difference in IBU.

I have been trying out hop teas lately. A half gram of pellets with boiling water for 4 minutes is a very bitter cup of tea. 1 minute is drinkable and quite nice. I did a cold brew of a full gram of pellets for 2 hours, and I would say the bitterness was equivalent to the 1 minute hot tea. This makes me think that the whole mantra of no significant IBU is not quite true, but depends on style. A lot of people are dry hopping in APAs and IPAs right? I think you might notice it in a style where there is not much base bitterness. I'd like to try a dry-hop only brew sometime.