Cold Dry Hopping

Over The Cliff Brewing

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Anyone doing this? I did it with my "Look on the Bright Side" IPA and I'm on the fence regarding the benefit. I kept the temp at around 42F for 4 days. The good of it is your brew is cold crashed and ready for kegging. I'll prolly try it again with different hops and more ounces.
 
I don't think I do the textbook version of "cold dry hopping", but lately I've been adding my final dry hop additions in the keg at packaging. So I'm dry-hopping at about room temperature as the beer is filling the keg, sealing the keg, and then immediately cooling to serving temp. One of the beers I did this with was Wayner's Pale Ale (Q2 brew) and it was really delicious.
 
Haven't done it, interested in the results, which seem encouraging so far.
 
I don't think I do the textbook version of "cold dry hopping", but lately I've been adding my final dry hop additions in the keg at packaging. So I'm dry-hopping at about room temperature as the beer is filling the keg, sealing the keg, and then immediately cooling to serving temp. One of the beers I did this with was Wayner's Pale Ale (Q2 brew) and it was really delicious.
Did you get a grassy/vegetal flavor after a few days?
 
I was planning on cold dry hopping Janet's Brown Ale that I bottled this past weekend but, I came across this post https://spikebrewing.com/blogs/ask-a-pro/dry-hop-temperatures by Blaze Ruud of YCH Hops, and decided against it. Basically he says, in his experience, dry hopping below fermentation temperature leads to grassy, woody & vegetal flavors as @Frankenbrewer mentioned. I'd still like to try is someday so I'll be very interested in the results others get.
 
I've done it three or four times now. I'm also not sure that it's obviously better than fermentation temperature dry hopping. I'll keep trying it out, mainly for the same reasons you mentioned, it's convenient with an automatic cold crash.
 
Yeah, I didn't taste anything more robust that I would have at ferm temp. I'll try it again with a small batch to see if it wows me.
 
I was planning on cold dry hopping Janet's Brown Ale that I bottled this past weekend but, I came across this post https://spikebrewing.com/blogs/ask-a-pro/dry-hop-temperatures by Blaze Ruud of YCH Hops, and decided against it. Basically he says, in his experience, dry hopping below fermentation temperature leads to grassy, woody & vegetal flavors as @Frankenbrewer mentioned. I'd still like to try is someday so I'll be very interested in the results others get.
Interesting information. I got the idea from listening to a podcast whereby the host and guest swore by the cold method. Oh well, if you don't try you'll never know
 
I like to throw the hops in when at the end of fermentation right before cold crashing. This lets the yeast kick up some co2 action from the hops and purge out the head space of air I just let in while dry hopping. so right after I dry hop I wait about an hour or two and then turn the ferm chamber down to 55f and then the next day I drop the ferm chamber to 40 and let it sit like that and keg on day 3 since the dry hop.
great way to get long lasting hop flavors rather than just dry hoping at 70f
 
Interesting.
I usually dry hop before we hit final gravity, and they sit in the fermenter during the entire diacetyl rest, several days.
Then I crash to 35F as fast as the ol' fridge can do it, and let it sit as long as I can stand (1 to 7 days, depending on how full the other kegs are).
 
So my Pale that I cold hopped came out great! But again my tastes vs everyone else; is subjective.
 
I have never dry hopped for more than 3-4 days at 64-66F. I then crash the beer to 33F and serve it right out of the fermenter. The beers are very nice and I don't seem to have the "hop tea" flavor except after the first 3-4 days after cold crashing, and then it's just "in your face" super fresh hops, like putting your face in a freshly opened bag of hops. By the 4 or 5th day it's wonderful and it's not as "green".

I think the problem comes in when the hops are in contact with the beers at higher temperatures for long periods of time, 2 weeks is a long time and the hops can get grassy. I don't seem to have a problem with that when I keep the hops in contact with the beer at near freezing temperatures. Now I'm wondering if I should transfer the beer to get it off the hops if the keg lasts too long, but I'm not sure it's a problem. I do like the idea of dry hopping cold, but I'm still wondering about really long contact, will it get grassy after 3-4 weeks? It hasn't been my experience so far.

The other thing I have been doing is to spund when dry hopping. I throw in some simple sugar solution with the dry hop charge and carbonate it at the same time. I thought this may help with mitigating oxygen ingress.

Interesting stuff.
 
I see a few people talk about transferring the beer off the yeast cake for the dry hop. The only reason I've heard is to stop the secondary fermentation from diastatic enzymes in the hops. I can't see how it would do that. It would certainly slow it down, but that's probably a worse result than having a quicker secondary fermentation with more yeast about to clean up any diacetyl that fermentation might create. Is there other reasons for moving the beer off the yeast cake prior to dry hopping?
 

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