dry hopping with pellets-grassy flavors?

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schristian619

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So I am a BIG fan of dry hopping and dounle dry hopping, and thus do so to most of my beers. I have noticed though, that when i use pellets, I get a strong grassy nose and taste, and not as much of the hop aroma I was hoping for. When I use whole hops though, they come out great! I typically never leave the hops in for more than 7-10 days. The only real difference I can think of is that with pellets, I use a bag, and with whole hops, I don't. Has anyone else experienced this?
 
Are you using different varieties of hops? Some have more of that grassy flavor than others.
 
New here to dry hopping, but my experience is the same...

What do they do... rake up grass with the hops they put in the pelitizer???

Thank goodness 4 weeks later it is showing signs of deminnishing in MMMMMOOOOOOO Grassy taste.
 
the grassy/green flavors you get are from the chlorophyll in the actual bracts of the hops

in whole hops, the bracts are left mostly intact, and the chlorophyll isnt exposed- in pellet hops, the bracts are all destroyed and smushed together, meaning more of the chlorophyll is exposed

think fresh cut lawn versus uncut lawn- which gives you more grassy smell?

that being said, i drop hop with pellets all the time, and never have a problem with a grassy smell or flavor- try only leaving the pellets in as long as it takes for them to sink to the bottom (and try speeding this up by cold-crashing)
 
I keep Columbus for bittering, and leave the dry hopping to Centennial, Amarillo, or Cascade. Once in a while Chinook, but only for a beer with a maltbill that can handle the intensity.
 
I have noticed this with cascade, and centennial, maybe one other in the past, but those are the only pellets I have had in while. I did dry hop with simcoe and amarillo (amarillo was leaf, but simcoe was pellets) and didn't really notice it, but that could been due to the leaf amarillo. It's not a huge deal since I prefer to use leaf hops anyway, more just curious. Maybe I just use more hops when dry hopping than others (1-2oz per variety typically)
 
If you've got an hour and a half to kill, you might want to listen to the Brew Strong podcast on Dry Hopping.

Basically there are quite a few different reasons for the grassy flavors. Many have already been gone over here.

A couple others that haven't been mentioned though are:

  • Ammount of hops (pellet or leaf) and ammount of time left in contact with the beer. The more hops you use, the more likely the grassy taste, the longer they are in contact with the beer, similar situation.
  • Use a hop with higher alpha-acid which normally means it has a higher oil content... this means you can use less dry hop for the same ammount of flavor (Columbus, Summit, etc)

Sorry if that was already abundantly clear, but it is something I just learned, so I thought I would pass it along.
 
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