Just what the subject says. What is the max time you could leave hops in a fermenter? Where I'm going with this is why not dry hop in the bottles if there was a good way to do it. Would the hops start to rot after a while? There's no oxygen and its covered in alcohol, so why not? What do you guys think?
What is the max time one could dry hop?
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GenIke
Well-Known Member
I've seen beers that have a hop cone in each bottle. Not sure if they did anything special or just dropped it in.
Leaving that much hop material in contact with the beer for longer than a couple weeks starts resulting in grassy flavors... In a bad way.
I was thinking of something small like those plastic things in a pill bottle that sucks up the moister. Something small like that, that you could put a small amount of hops in each bottle without getting the hop particles in the beer. I wouldn't put a whole cone in each bottle. Thanks for your input though guys.
mitchar19
Well-Known Member
The longest time frame that I have ever seen recommended or used by pro brewers is 14 days.
The problem is the process. After 7-14 days the hops have given everything they can to the beer. Then you bottle and wait more for it to carb up. This lag/wait period allows the aroma to fade slightly.
Oso's brewing in Wisconsin makes an IPA called Lupulin Maximus. It has a warnings all over it for choking hazards and it is a novelty more than anything else. The reason I say that is because the beer is damn near flat because the hop cone would create a nucleation point for the CO2 and it would gush at normal carbonation levels. This is anti-productive as the carbonation helps with the aroma.
I disagree based on personal experiences. I dry hop my IPAs in my serving keg and have had the same beer on tap for over a month. The aroma fades slightly but I have NEVER detected "grassy" anything in my beers. I mostly use pellet hops so this may be why. YMMV
I dry hop in the keg and the hops stay in for months. No grassy flavors. I've tried adding hops to the bottle and it was a total mess because they disintegrated.
Yeah,it seems to me they wouldn't compact on the bottom either. Just grainy green stuff getting in the glass toward the end of the pour.
I dry hopped my hop metheglins for over a month and they had no vegetal or grassy off flavors...granted these were 12+% ABV meads and not beers, but I think general principals apply...
I wonder if this is another one of those things that just doesn't translate well from commercial to homebrew scale?
I wonder if this is another one of those things that just doesn't translate well from commercial to homebrew scale?
I think that's a possibility, along with variability in personal taste and different effects from different hop varieties. I've heard many more stories if getting grassiness from British hops than American varieties, for instance.
