dry hopped, but no time to bottle for a few more days...

[Hoochin'Fool]

I've got 2.8 gallons of an IPA that's ready to package, I drop-hopped with half an ounce of Mandarina Bavaria on Sunday, but realistically won't be ready to package until next Tuesday. Is 9 days too long for those hops to be sitting in there? I could package tonight if y'all strongly recommend, but like I said, things would work out so much better if I can just wait until next week without too much harm coming from an overly long dry-hop.

 

[worlddivides]

There are breweries out there that dry hop for very long periods of time. Russian River's Pliny the Elder is hopped for 2 full weeks, for example. Nowadays, most people consider 3-4 days to be optimal and tests and experiments have shown that to be true. But there are delicious and award-winning beers that dry hop for long periods of time.

 

[wepeeler]

Personally I don't go more than 48 hours, but I certainly would not go 9 days. That's just me personally.

 

[tracer bullet]

Can you chill it? I'd think any activity would slow down.

 

[day_trippr]

I've also greatly changed my approach to dry hopping after considering Scott Janish's work on the subject. Now, I "soft-crash" to 50°F/10°C for two days under light (~0.4psi CO2) pressure, then dry hop for 48 hours before hard-crashing to 36°F over 2-3 days (again, under CO2 pressure) and then kegging.

All that said, I'm not sure a few extra days with a just 1/2 ounce of Mandarina Bavaria will make that much difference...

Cheers!

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Was able to squeeze a brew/bottle session in last night (so I could re-use the yeast-cake). Anyways, a warm and flat sample tasted really nice, no "vegetal weirdness" that I could detect, even with 6 days dry-hop. Definitely going to experiment more with the Mandarina hops!

 

[worlddivides]

Was able to squeeze a brew/bottle session in last night (so I could re-use the yeast-cake). Anyways, a warm and flat sample tasted really nice, no "vegetal weirdness" that I could detect, even with 6 days dry-hop. Definitely going to experiment more with the Mandarina hops!

Short dry hopping becoming the thing is more of a recent development. Back when I first started brewing and right until I took break, for those roughly 5 years, it was standard to dry hop for 7 days, and people usually saw dry hopping more than that as the ideal (again, with some breweries doing really long dry hopping). Now, I believe research done in 2011 or 2012 actually did show that short dry hopping imparted just as much hop character as long dry hopping, showing there wasn't necessarily any reason to dry hop for so long (I say "necessarily" because some people do prefer the slightly different character in longer dry hopped beers), but it wasn't until New England IPAs took off that short dry hopping actually became common, partially due to the massive amounts of dry hopping in that style and them tending to dry hop during active fermentation.

I've personally never had any vegetal character in any beers I've dry hopped for longer than 7 days, but if I remember correctly, the vegetal character is more common after 2 weeks of dry hopping or so, though it also depends on the cohumulone content.