Dry Hop Creep

[Rainy]

Great podcast about dry hop creep to be found here
Quite some interesting and new information in there and quite some high level research by the group of Thomas Shellhammer connected to it.

Centrifuging out the hops seems to stop the enzymatic activity

What's really interesting is that the enzymatic activity of the enzymes in the dry hops goes on even at temperatures lower than fermentation temperature. So even when you dry hop cold, there's still more fermentable sugars being produced by the enzymatic activity, but not being consumed by any yeast activity. So you could be packaging beers with fermentable sugars in it without knowing it.

Near the end there's also a mention of a study of packaged hoppy beers of commercial brewers and how their sugar profile changes over time in the package, due to the dry hopping, even though these beers had almost no yeast of hops in the package.
The residual extract didn't change but the composition of the extract changed. Maltose and glucose levels grew both in warm and cold storing conditions.

These changes didn't occur in pasteurized beers.

Thom Shellhammer then goes on to wonder whether the effect of hoppy beers becoming sweeter over time might also partly happen due to this effect of sugar production in the package.

Would love to hear the thoughts of more people to see what they think are the take aways of this podcast as I'm not really an expert.

 

[specharka]

I read the same information in a CB&B article a few months ago. The practical takeaway from this information is to incorporate a thorough diacetyl rest while dry hopping to prevent off-flavors from emerging; e.g. don’t dry hop and cold crash immediately. Or dry hop at lagering temperatures to arrest enzymatic activity and preclude yeast reanimation.

The good news is the enzymes appear to be insoluble, so if you can remove the dry hops and perform a diacetyl rest thereafter, you’re in good hands.