Dry Hopping - How do YOU do it?

[Siborg]

I know, I know. There are plenty of resources around on how to dry hop. I have read them and I have googled them.

I've only ever dry hopped once with galaxy flowers a while ago and the results weren't worth the mess. I'm willing to give it another go, but I'm curious to see how everyone else is doing it.

Flowers? Pellets? Primary? Secondary (this seems to be more commonplace in the states)? Keg? Bag? Steel ball? How long? How much?

I've read a few posts about these liquid "hop shots". Are they worth it? Or would it be cheaper to steep some hops in boiling water for a minute in my spare coffee plunger purchased for that very purpose? I have a chiller and cubes for no chilling - how does cube hopping go for the people that do that?

 

[Droopy Brew]

Step 1- Remove pants
Step 2- Slowwwly peel back the glad wrap
Step 3- Grab a fist full of hops
Step 4- Throw them in and cover back up.
Step 5- Go back to the brew cave to retrieve forgotten pants.

 

[Droopy Brew]

More seriously but-
I wait til at least day 7 and finished ferment. I usually use pellets so just weigh them out and throw them in.
If using flowers or a shit load of pellets (that may block up the tap when 200g or more of hops swell up on the bottom of the FV) then I put them in a hop sock with a SS bolt or fitting. Both the hop sock and fitting are soaked for 10 minutes in Starsan before filling with hops and tied up.
Give it a couple of days and cold crash.
Sometimes I will wait till cold crash to dry hop- especially with renowned grassy hops like Galaxy.

 

[droid]

these days i keg hop, meaning when i'm ready to put a keg in the fridge and put it onto continual c02 to carb up i open the lid and either use a stocking cable tied to the underside of the keg lid (the new keg king lids have a welded l-bracket with a hole in it which is great) or a tea ball infuser thingo which is a stainless mesh in two halves that connect together. once it's in i purge the headspace with c02 and leave it until the keg is empty...amazing taste and smell

if i wasn't keg hopping and still bottling i'd work back from when i wanted to bottle, so if bottling was Sunday, i'd hop Tuesday probably. if you use a bubbler airlock thing then drill a small hole in the lower stem and cable tie a stocking to it, lovely chubbly

<edit - all done without fearing the foam...spray everything>

 

[Dave70]

Last four days of the ferment before cold crash.
About 50 - 60 grams (pellets) depending on the style.
Keep AA generally between the 5 - 9%. Can't remember why. Probably bullshit.
Crash as cold as I dare.
Poke a tiny hole in the glad wrap.
Transfer to keg.

 

[lobedogg]

Similar to above for dry-hopping. Wait til I'm close to terminal, and chuck desired amount of pellets in loose for 3 days before cold-crashing. Minimum of 1 g/l, up to 5 g/l if for an IPA.
Sometimes I'll keg hop if I feel it could do with something a little extra, but I like to keep it pretty simple for the most part.

For cube-hopping I've had good experience with just a bittering charge in the boil, then cube-hopping only for flavour/aroma. Less trub in the kettle that way as well.

 

[yankinoz]

Pellets, loose, added 24-48 hours before bottling, never more. That does extract the oils, very but adds little grassiness.

 

[Coodgee]

Until recently I had always dry hopped into primary or secondary while the beer was still at fermentation temps - I've only ever dry hopped ales so that would normally be 18 degrees or so. A few times lately I have added the hops to beer that was close to 0 degrees in secondary. I found that dry hopping at this temperature substantially reduced the "nice" aroma that I got from the hops - in the case of galaxy there was none of that fruity passionfruit aroma. All I could smell was that aroma that is common to all hops - you could say grassy, vegetative etc. you could also taste the effect - bit of astringent, resiny flavour/ feel to the beer.

I'll be going back to dry hopping warm beer for sure from now on. Also I use a mesh hop bag for all hop additions as there is nothing worse than hop floaties in your beer.

 

[crowmanz]

I dry hop pellets, at the start of cold crash.....old fridge so takes about 2-3 days to get to 2ish degrees

 

[mxd]

if I want to add "flavour" i'll drop hop about 1g a ltr on day 2 or 3 of fermenting in a bag and remove bag after 2 or 3 days.

If I want to add aroma I add 1 to 5 grams a ltr when I cold crash out loose again no more than 3 days, only ever used pellets.

 

[indica86]

Ususally at the start of cold crashing.
Throw whatever in and set the stc to 1°c.

Plenty of aroma from that for me and that always enhances the flavour.

 

[Reman]

I dry hop once I reach terminal gravity, usually no more than 5 days.

Put pellets in a star san'd hop sock and it goes in the primary (since I don't secondary)

 

[///]

Flowers are for the birds.... Only good in a proper hop back ...

Science says a 2 charge method first once ferm has stopped and Vdk clear with a drop to 12c for the second charge. Plus 48 hours from charge 2 then crash chill.

Another way I have done is charge 1 at end of ferm, charge 2 at day 4, crash cool at 7 days. Free rise the ferm 1-2 Plato off terminal and keep the beer warmer. What I did not like about this method was trying to test for vdk with all the hops in there and also the customer did not want to yeast-off till the cooling was put on.

Or there is our way, we let free rise, check vdk, yeast off then add in dry hops and leave for 5-7 days then chill. All in at the same time.

In a hb world it is hard to yeast off, so transfer to a secondary and away you go. Leaving on the yeast ain't the best, will let loose some sulphur notes and the yeast will suck up some of the hop flavour. One risk is infection on the transfer so you just need to be clean.

We put so much hop-age in our last White IPA we lost 500l to waste, we use silica gel instead of filtering and the bottom of the cone gets real fluffy. With nearly 90 kg in the dry hop, it was sad seeing the hoppy mess go to drain, thankfully the beer on top was awesome.

 

[Rocker1986]

I usually wait until fermentation is done, throw them into a few stainless tea strainer thingys, into the beer, let it sit at whatever temp its at for a couple of days then cold crash it for a week and keg/bottle etc. I don't bother with secondaries, so this just happens in primary.

Have also simply thrown them in loose with no problems of FV taps blocking or getting hop matter blocking keg lines etc. Cold crashing helps with that though, forcing them to drop out much quicker.

 

[Reman]

More brulosophy dry hopping posts than you can poke a stick at!

http://brulosophy.com/2015/10/26/dry-hop-length-long-vs-short-exbeeriment-results/
http://brulosophy.com/2015/09/21/dry-hop-quantity-a-little-vs-a-lot-exbeeriment-results/
http://brulosophy.com/2015/05/04/single-vs-double-dry-hop-exbeeriment-results/
http://brulosophy.com/2016/01/18/dry-hop-temperature-warm-vs-cool-exbeeriment-results/
http://brulosophy.com/2015/02/23/whole-leaf-vs-pellet-hops-part-1-dry-hop-exbeeriment-results/

 

[pist]

Wait till primary is done, then bomb it with my choice of hops (around 100g if i want a heap of aroma/flavour) for around 3-4 days while cold crashing seemdas ist ein voller Kombination wunderbar!s to work fine for me.

 

[Dae Tripper]

What is VDK?

 

[Goose]

Vicinal Diketone. Diacetyl and its related compounds. Unwanted in most beer styles.

Dry hopping, as I am a slurry re-user I only dry hop on the last batch before I clean out and sanitise the fermenter. For a real hop bomb I dose up to 5g per litre with pellets straight atop the primary. I add these after fermentation is complete to stop CO2 carrying away the aromatic oils. Period is for 5 days, the last 2 or 3 I cold crash.

I have had some issues with clogging when racking to keg when dosing at high rates per above though....

 

[Siborg]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Seeing a pretty common theme, which is confirming some of my thoughts to my intended approaches to this. Gonna have to get a big IPA brewed now and dry hop the shit out of it!