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I have dry hopped before (method (1) below) and was looking for other dry hopping ideas when I came across this article.
I have been thinking about trying the second method listed here and was wondering if anyone has tried this before. Might be interesting.
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(1) Many commercial brewers will add their dry hops shortly after primary fermentation is complete, and leave the hops in their beer for a few days at fermentation temperature before cold crashing the beer. The advantage of this method is that you do get good hop oil transfer, and cold crashing the beer will allow any excess hop material to fall out of the beer.
(2) Some brewers have experimented with adding dry hops during active fermentation (adding hops with gravity 0.004-0.006 above predicted terminal gravity.)
One school of thought says this is inefficient as the CO2 bubbles during active fermentation will “scrub” the aroma from the hops and be lost.
However, this is too simplistic a view, since hop aroma comes from the hop aroma oils suspended in the beer and is not merely some “gas” to be scrubbed out by CO2.
The logic is that any oxygen introduced with dry-hopping will be consumed by the active yeast as it finishes the fermentation. There’s probably not too much aromatic loss at this point, since fermentation is fairly slow.
What does happen during active fermentation is that you often get a slightly different flavor profile than dry hopping at a later time. The precise mechanism is not well understood, but it is clear that the chemical processes during active fermentation interacts with the hop profile and produces an entirely different overall effect. Commercial and home brewers have just started to play with this method, but it is an interesting option for those willing to experiment.
More adventurous brewers might experiment with dry hops during active fermentation – which can produce some interesting results.
***********************
If you have tried both methods with the same beer what were the noted differences?
Thoughts?
I have been thinking about trying the second method listed here and was wondering if anyone has tried this before. Might be interesting.
***************
(1) Many commercial brewers will add their dry hops shortly after primary fermentation is complete, and leave the hops in their beer for a few days at fermentation temperature before cold crashing the beer. The advantage of this method is that you do get good hop oil transfer, and cold crashing the beer will allow any excess hop material to fall out of the beer.
(2) Some brewers have experimented with adding dry hops during active fermentation (adding hops with gravity 0.004-0.006 above predicted terminal gravity.)
One school of thought says this is inefficient as the CO2 bubbles during active fermentation will “scrub” the aroma from the hops and be lost.
However, this is too simplistic a view, since hop aroma comes from the hop aroma oils suspended in the beer and is not merely some “gas” to be scrubbed out by CO2.
The logic is that any oxygen introduced with dry-hopping will be consumed by the active yeast as it finishes the fermentation. There’s probably not too much aromatic loss at this point, since fermentation is fairly slow.
What does happen during active fermentation is that you often get a slightly different flavor profile than dry hopping at a later time. The precise mechanism is not well understood, but it is clear that the chemical processes during active fermentation interacts with the hop profile and produces an entirely different overall effect. Commercial and home brewers have just started to play with this method, but it is an interesting option for those willing to experiment.
More adventurous brewers might experiment with dry hops during active fermentation – which can produce some interesting results.
***********************
If you have tried both methods with the same beer what were the noted differences?
Thoughts?