to dry hop, or too many flavors...

[justenoughforme]

i'm making a 7% beer with chocolate and black patent malt (also a lot of crystal 60)

i used cascade hops as it's what i had. 2 ounces at 60 and one ounce at 20, to give my planned 50 IBU's (47 on calculator)


should i dry hop some fuggle or other english hop, or do i have too much going on ...
... i'm new enough to this i dont know the line between complexity and confusing.

 

[d3track]

Split it? Dry hop half, bottle the other half.

 

[chickypad]

Sounds to me like you've made something along the lines of a robust porter or a stout. I am a big hop head but personally I don't like a lot of late hops in those styles and I don't dry hop them. I probably should qualify this by saying I also don't drink too many black IPA/cascadian darks as I just don't like the combo of that much hops and dark roasted malts. So I guess it comes down to what you're after. If you're going to do it a milder English hop sounds better to me than more cascade.

 

[Calypso]

My approach (take it with a grain of salt) is that I pick something I want to showcase: a particular hop characteristic, a flavor, certain yeast characteristics, certain malt character. I then make sure that as I build the recipe up, nothing I add is going to *detract* from that thing.

So take your recipe for example. A reasonably complex malt bill, and obviously the focal point of your recipe. I wouldn't add anything that is going to distract from that too much. I would focus on early hop additions to get the bittering you need to balance out that malt, but then wouldn't do any late hop additions. Or if I did, I would make sure they were clean, noble hops that add very little flavor.

Of course, there are wildly popular beer styles that say nerts to that. Barleywine, for example.

 

[justenoughforme]

as i understood dry hopping won't increase bitterness at all, just add aroma. is this wrong ?

 

[justenoughforme]

wow barleywine, had three kinds, never liked them,


i went for 50 IBU's because it's what it says on a few of my favorite beers.

i'm definitely leaning no dry hop, and save the citra for a yellow lighter beer.

 

[dkennedy]

I'd skip it, until a sample said "hey, this needs more hops". See what your Cascades did, may be hop-forward to your liking already (not just bitterness, but overall hop character).

 

[Pappers_]

as i understood dry hopping won't increase bitterness at all, just add aroma. is this wrong ?

Correct

 

[asterix404]

If you want a Black IPA, hop it. If you want a porter, don't but most likely you shouldn't have added the 20 min hop addition either. Basically, do what you want and it won't be bad but it will be different.