Dry Hopping: Covering up Beer's Best Features?

[Clint Yeastwood]

I just cranked out two beers to replenish the keezer: a stout and an orange (my term for amber) lager. I love both of these beers. I always call the lager my "orange lager," but it could be substituted for IPA in a crowd that wasn't picky.

5 gallons Marion County Mystery Well Water Water
9 lbs Rahr Pale Malt (2 Row) US (4.0 SRM)
1 lbs 4.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)
1 lbs Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)
0.80 oz Nugget [15.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 39.5 IBUs
0.25 ml Fermcap-S (Boil)
1.25 oz Crystal [2.90 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 30.0 min, 180.0 F 2.5 IBUs
1.0 pkg Diamond Lager (1L starter)

I posted the stout recipe in another thread.

While I was waiting for the lager to be drinkable, I cracked a Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, which is my favorite factory IPA when I can't get Snake Dog, which is all the time. I was really impressed by the aroma, and I started wondering if I should dry-hop these beers the next time I make them.

I'm kind of on the fence. On the one hand, the added aroma and flavor of the Dogfish Head was nice, but on the other, it seems to me that if you throw absolutely everything at a beer, you can distract the drinker from the fundamentals. Think of it this way: a really excellent cheese pizza is a wonderful and somewhat rare thing, so if you throw 8 toppings on it, you may actually make it worse.

I wonder if other people have thought of it this way.

I'm definitely going to dry hop my next beer, which is a wheat ale, with Mandarina Bavaria.

 

[lumpher]

I feel the same way about it. I like a basic beer better than the new "pop tart rainbow super dry-hopped turn it into a hop-fest make you think you just bit into 17 different hop vines at once" beers. A good Amber, Nut Brown, German Lager, or my favorite Dry Stout, beats all the "fruity blow the taste buds out" beers. I can make a tasty wheat with 1 or 2 hops, or I can hop it with every hop ever grown and what do I end up with? I have no idea, but it's just an excuse to say someone made it. No thank you, sir or ma'am... I'll pass.

 

[Agent]

To your title, "best" is all relative. Because who is to say that a DIPA is better or worse than a Dopplebock?

The wonder of homebrewing is that you get to make beer that tastes how you want it to. Whether you prefer balance and harmony or a Cacophony Dry Hopped Triple IPA, it's all the same.

As with many things, people discover something new and want more and more of it until they reach the tipping point of "yeah, that's a bit too much".

 

[mac_1103]

Variety is something something something. Right? If you think one of your recipes might be improved by dry hopping, then give it a whirl. If you think it would hurt another, then don't. Or try a split batch.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I always call the lager my "orange lager," but it could be substituted for IPA in a crowd that wasn't picky.

I'd call that a bug rather than a feature myself, but whatever works for you....

0.80 oz Nugget [15.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 39.5 IBUs
1.25 oz Crystal [2.90 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 30.0 min, 180.0 F 2.5 IBUs

I started wondering if I should dry-hop these beers the next time I make them.....if you throw absolutely everything at a beer, you can distract the drinker from the fundamentals.

It could be argued that throwing so many IBUs at a lager that people think it's an IPA would be distracting the drinker from the fundamentals of being a lager.... A bit of balance is seldom a bad thing.

But dry-hopping lagers is certainly something that happens - Tipopils is the obvious example, discussed a bit in these threads, it's dry-hopped with Spalter Select.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/pilsner-hops.699942/#post-9275672https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/italian-pilsner-discussion.683007/#post-8961315

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I may drop the bitterness a little next time around. I wrote this recipe when I was more in love with IBU's than I am now.