Dry-hop Vs. Randal

[Brewing Clamper]

I normally dry-hop my APA with 1oz of Amarillo, but I've been wanting to try a randal. Anyway, in Feb I have my annual Mardi Gras party and we usually go through 4kegs of brew. I was thinking of setting up a randal for the APA for the event. Do I still have to dry-hop or is this a replacement type deal? Just curious...

 

[martymoat]

Personally i would not dry hop a beer that i had planned to send through a Randall and that is only if i where planning 100 percent on randallizing the beer. But thats the beautiful thing about the randall, just set it up to hook up to what ever keg you want. if you had 4 kegs of the same beer you could be pouring 4 variations of the same beer and that would be super cool.

 

[david_42]

My experience has been a randall is a nice addition, but it isn't a substitute for dry hopping. A few seconds of flowing through the randall will extract very light aroma oils and not much else. (This assumes you are thinking in terms of a canister filter randall. )

 

[Beer Bomb]

i agree with david... the randall in my experience is not a substitute for dry hopping. I think it's more of a gimmick than a character addition to you beer. My friend and I made one, and it now sits in my garage because my friend has deemed it "a waste of hops and beer" .. he wont use it, but I will pull it out for special serving occasions.

 

[Brewing Clamper]

I was a little worried about getting enough out of it. My friends do pull beer rather fast so I don't expect it to contact the hops for too long. I guess I'll have to dry hop it anyway... thanks guys...

 

[tokolosh]

I'm going top dissent on this one and I haven't even use a true randall before. I am cheap. And therefore before setting up one of these systems I tried the cheapo version:

French Press + Whole Leaf Hops + Beer = Cheapo Randall.

Unsure if this variation imparts different flavor/bitter characteristics than the real one, but I had a test group come to very opposite conclusions than yours. Since the thing isn't hooked directly to the keg we had the original to sample next to the hop-ified version. Huge difference in aroma and a lesser but very notable difference in taste.

As far as a substitute for dry hopping, I couldn't say. Make one of each and be your own judge.