Odd AIPA question

[bonecitybrewco]

Of course it's about hoppiness but here's the weird thing...I did everything right. So I'm confused. I've read all the primers, followed all instructions and studied all I could and still had problems. Please read whole post.

The recipe is based on ZD but changed quite a bit.

Malt base is similar.

13.25 lbs 2-Row
1.5lbs Munich 10
0.5lbs Melanoidin
0.5lbs CaraFoam
0.5lbs Crystal 60

0.5oz Warrior FWH
1.25oz Citra 10 min
1.25oz Citra 5 min
1.25oz Citra 0 min
1.25oz Citra whirlpool 20 mins
3.6oz Citra Dry Hop 5 days
2.4oz Cascade Dry Hop 3 days

Water profile:
Ca 128, Mg 0, Na 8, Cl 68, SO4 222

OG: 1.071
FG: 1.014

The Yeast Bay Vermont Ale yeast used

Pitched a healthy starter (1.7L) and fermented around 66F and ramped to 70 towards end to clean up yeast off flavours until day 10. Day 10 sample at 1.018 and first dry hop addition added. Day 12 sample was at FG and added 2nd dry hop addition. Day 15 no off flavours detected in sample other than some boozyness which is obvious for a 7.5%. Began cold crashing to 50 overnight then down to 35. I'm hoping that boozyness mellows out in the bottle conditioning process.

So there's all the info. Problem I'm having is that I'm currently cold crashing and the sample I took on day 15 was extremely un-hoppy aroma wise. Like none whatsoever. Lots of interesting flavour, fruity, sweet, boozy, smooth bitterness. Just zero hop aroma at all.

Question is this:

Should a pre-bottling sample have a ton of hop aroma? Or is that brought out by the carbonation and bottling process? Obviously fermenting in a bucket there's quite a bit of oxygen leaching so that is a definite possibility but to lose ALL hop aroma? That seems insane.

Any thoughts? Will this still have a ton of hop aroma out of the bottle because of oils in the beer? Or no?

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1468901015.186345.jpg

 

[Sammy86]

From my experience I find the aroma becomes more accentuated once carbed...I also think it's difficult to get a good aroma smell from a sample pulled by a turkey baster in hydrometer tube

 

[brick_haus]

Yea, wait until you open a bottle before you get too concerned.

 

[rmiranda]

That's cold. Maybe too cold to get a full smell of aroma and taste of hops.

 

[m00ps]

how were the hops handled and how likely is it that your bottling process oxidized the beer?

ive never made an IPA that turned out well when the sample didnt make the whole room smell of hops

 

[bonecitybrewco]

how were the hops handled and how likely is it that your bottling process oxidized the beer?

ive never made an IPA that turned out well when the sample didnt make the whole room smell of hops

Hops were frozen and pitched directly into fermenter. 3-piece airlock used. As I mentioned earlier, I was using a bucket fermenter and that could have allowed a lot of oxygen in/out, no? Smell out of airlock over next few days was incredible but seems to be all gone now.

I have not bottled yet. Still crashing. Planning on bottling tonight or tomorrow night. It was the pre-crash sample that didn't smell hoppy at all.

I really would hate to have wasted 6 oz of hops...

 

[bonecitybrewco]

So an update.

Bottled last night. Went to clean my fermenter and holy cow did the trub smell like citra and cascade had a baby. Even the empty bucket now smells more like hops than my beer did going into the bottles. Do you think the hops didn't get enough "contact" with the wort and maybe all the oils went down the tubes with the trub? Is that even possible?

I see people dry hop by just adding the hops to the fermenter without a bag and leaving them there. But the question is are they shaking the fermenter/stirring to get better contact and distribution?

Is it possible all the hop oils are in suspension and that once the beer in bottles warms up and ferments down that it will release those aromatic oils?

I just would hate to have wasted 6 oz of hops and get literally zero oil extraction from them because of a really weird situation.

Side note: Where I'm keeping my bucket stored until I get home from work smells like a bag of hops. I'm seriously kicking myself right now. I'm almost certain the oils didn't extract....

 

[TravelingLight]

I almost always add my dry hop additions straight in with no bag. And I do not stir, shake, or otherwise agitate it. Never had any issues doing it this way.

 

[kh54s10]

As stated before, wait until it is carbonated and at serving temperature. I have had some where there was a huge difference in taste and aroma between the sample at bottling and when it was fully conditioned.