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Is there such thing as too late to dry hop

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erick0619

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I have a batch that's been sitting in primary for over three weeks now and It's going to be a couple of weeks before I can bottle. Can I still dry hop at this point without oxidizing my beer? The reason I ask is because I assume at this point it's not producing any co2. I most likely won't be able to bottle till around the 7th of next month. This is a marris otter el dorado smash. Would it be out if style to dry hop? Here's the recipe, 16 lbs of MO mashed at 155 for 90 minutes, 4 oz of el dorado in the boil, fermented with wlp002 at 66F. I was thinking maybe dry hopping with 2 oz of el dorado on the 31st of this month.
 
Yup you should be fine- especially if you're using pellet hops as they don't hold in Oxygen the way leaf clusters do. If you're really concerned about it, add a small amount of sugar to the primary when you add your hops and it will restart fermentation and blow off a little co2. I really don't think that's necessary. You'll be adding more oxygen when you transfer to bottles than what your dry hopping will do.
 
I agree that it will be fine. In fact you should always wait until the yeast is done fermenting and has at least cleared a little before you dry hop. If you add hops while it's still fermenting the CO2 can scrub some of the hop aroma out and the hop oils can adsorb to the yeast cells and be pulled out of the beer when they flocculate.
 
Just because of how my pipeline works, I rarely dry hop before the three week mark. I usually try to time it out so I dry hop for a week before kegging (or bottling in your case) This way you are getting the freshest hop experience.

As others said, it's best to dry hop after the fermentation is done anyways, that way your aroma isn't scrubbed off.
 
Just because of how my pipeline works, I rarely dry hop before the three week mark. I usually try to time it out so I dry hop for a week before kegging (or bottling in your case) This way you are getting the freshest hop experience.

As others said, it's best to dry hop after the fermentation is done anyways, that way your aroma isn't scrubbed off.

This makes me feel a lot better thank you.
 
I just bottled an IPA that I forgot about and it sat in the primary for about 7 weeks. Oops. Dry hopped the crap out of it and it's been in the bottle about a week and a half now. Cracked one open last night just to see and it was great.
 
I just bottled an IPA that I forgot about and it sat in the primary for about 7 weeks. Oops. Dry hopped the crap out of it and it's been in the bottle about a week and a half now. Cracked one open last night just to see and it was great.

sweeeet so how much hops did you dryhop with? I was thinking 2 ounces but im tempted to do more....
 
Well the kit called for dry hopping with an ounce of Centennial, but after I forgot about it I wanted to try to revive some of the hop character. I ended up using an ounce each of Centennial, Citra, and Wakatu. It came out well. Next IPA I do though I'm going to try some different techniques.
 

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