Dry Hopping - Kegging vs. Bottling

[mmonacel]

Is there a difference when dry hopping when you plan to bottle vs. when you keg? From what I can read up on, it appears that you can dry hop, but the nose will fade after a little bit of time. I really love a nice, complex, hoppy nose. So my question here is if you want to retain a great hop aroma for as long as possible (without resorting to over dry-hopping and "playing the fade") does bottling or kegging win out?

As a follow up question, if you're relegated to bottling, what's the best way to retain or extend your hop aroma over the long haul?

And for a third (ok - getting greedy here) question, will your hop aroma from bottle #1 be significantly different than your last bottle over the course of say a few weeks?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Suthrncomfrt1884]

This is a tricky question. I'm not sure whether kegging or bottling is better when it comes to keeping the hop aromas since I've never really thought to take notes on it.

As far as the hops go...any highly hopped beer or dry-hopped beer will fade with time. This is why IPAs should be drank sooner than later. Unless you completely filter your yeast, or have a good cold crash, most homebrew will continue to change for the life of the product. Even without the yeast, it will change.

Simply put, hops will fade...regardless of what you do. The benefit of kegging is that you can dry hop in the keg so the beer is always in contact with those hops. There's a local brewery around me that actually bottles their IPA with a whole hop dropped into each bottle. I've always wondered if this would help retain the hop flavors and aromas.

Maybe someone can chime in with their experiences. I don't really think there's much you can do, but I could be wrong.

 

[samc]

You can keep opening up the keg and changing out the hops as needed. That would be hard to do with bottles. I guess it all depends on how fast you drink your bottles.

 

[david_42]

I routinely re-hop kegs. Since I don't bottle much, I can't compare.

 

[neovox]

I routinely re-hop kegs. Since I don't bottle much, I can't compare.

Never thought about re-hopping in the keg. Do you get a lot of sediment when you do that? I assume you use a bag.

 

[Bert1097]

You could always do the tea infusion ball hung by the non-waxed/flavored dental floss to switch out "old" hops.

 

[Suthrncomfrt1884]

Never thought about re-hopping in the keg. Do you get a lot of sediment when you do that? I assume you use a bag.

Someone on here mentioned a good method awhile back. Put your hops in a hop back and wedge them behind the dip tub so they stay there. It wouldn't work out if you were trying to re-hop, but the initial hopping works well to keep sludge off the bottom.