Dry Hop vs. No Dry Hop (& carbonation issues)

[jamesdn]

In the next few weeks I'm going to be brewing a pale ale as an experiment to test out the potency of hops ONLY in the boil / whirlpool vs. in the boil / WP AND as a dry hop. It will be a basic smash beer with an English ale yeast, probably. Your help is needed to get me fair test results! And also a nice tasting beer

So, the fermentation set-up. I will make the wort as usual, and then I have a few options I think:

a) split the wort into 2 FVs (I have 1 pressure rated plastic, and 1 bucket), pitch both, dry hop 1 and leave the other. Bottle both vessels and condition with carb drops.

b) split the wort but not quite as above - half into the pressure rated FV and the other half into a keg (which is of course pressure rated), pitch both, only dry hop 1. Main difference here is that I could force carb the beer once it's done fermenting in both. I have the ability to then counter-pressure fill bottles directly from each FV. No bottle conditioning as such, maybe a better tasting hoppy pale - in my experience bottle conditioning is better for maltier / darker beers and mutes hop flavour compared to keg.

c) keep the wort in 1 FV, probably the pressurised plastic one. Pitch, get near enough to FG, and then bottle half. Dry hop the remaining beer, wait a few days, and then bottle the rest. Carbonation could be done using either method - but I'm guessing bottle conditioning will be easier.

My main goal is to test the difference in hop flavour, and I realise a lot of my points are around carbonation. But if the consensus is that bottle conditioning wont get the most out of my hops, then that reduces my options. I want to get the MOST FLAVOUR while also keep the test fair. Is that too much to ask?

I welcome all comments to my points above, opinions, and ideas of your own that might help me out!

 

[hoppyscotty]

I'm moving more towards ditching whirlpool/hopstand and doing all my aroma and flavour hop additions in the fermenter. After doing a few beers recently with big hopstand additions and no dry hop additions, I was disappointed with the results. I think you cant avoid the fact that you're just losing alot of the volatile essential oils to evaporation even at the lower 60 - 70 degree C hopstand temps I tend to carry them out at. Also with hop stands its hard to get accurate with your IBU calculations, if that is even of interest to you, so just feels cleaner and simpler to me to just separate the two process of hop bittering on the hot side and aroma and flavour on the dry hop and shorten and simplify the brewday by ditching the hopstand altogether.

Only caveat to that is using a hop back. I have a hop missile/rocket and have used it a couple of times but not really got into it so haven't made my mind up with it mainly because of the difficulty of not having a chiller 'man' enough to do a single pass chill to fermentation temperatures. I now have a nice big plate chiller so can start to think about trying that again. I do think a hopstand provides a different kind of hop flavour than dry hopping but it might be easier to adjust hops in the dry hop to achieve what you want rather than faff around with the hopstand.

Nice experiment though and will be interested in the results.

One thing I am curious about though is with the flavours hops contribute to the beer. Most hops contribute more than one flavour contibution and I am curious to know if it's possible to select a specific flavour. So for example if a hop delivers both citrous flavours and, say, coconut, then is it possible to bring out more coconut over citrus or visa versa...so maybe a warmer hopstand, or dry hopping a different temperatures might bring out one flavour over the other.

 

[jamesdn]

I'm moving more towards ditching whirlpool/hopstand and doing all my aroma and flavour hop additions in the fermenter. After doing a few beers recently with big hopstand additions and no dry hop additions, I was disappointed with the results. I think you cant avoid the fact that you're just losing alot of the volatile essential oils to evaporation even at the lower 60 - 70 degree C hopstand temps I tend to carry them out at. Also with hop stands its hard to get accurate with your IBU calculations, if that is even of interest to you, so just feels cleaner and simpler to me to just separate the two process of hop bittering on the hot side and aroma and flavour on the dry hop and shorten and simplify the brewday by ditching the hopstand altogether.

Only caveat to that is using a hop back. I have a hop missile/rocket and have used it a couple of times but not really got into it so haven't made my mind up with it mainly because of the difficulty of not having a chiller 'man' enough to do a single pass chill to fermentation temperatures. I now have a nice big plate chiller so can start to think about trying that again. I do think a hopstand provides a different kind of hop flavour than dry hopping but it might be easier to adjust hops in the dry hop to achieve what you want rather than faff around with the hopstand.

Nice experiment though and will be interested in the results.

One thing I am curious about though is with the flavours hops contribute to the beer. Most hops contribute more than one flavour contibution and I am curious to know if it's possible to select a specific flavour. So for example if a hop delivers both citrous flavours and, say, coconut, then is it possible to bring out more coconut over citrus or visa versa...so maybe a warmer hopstand, or dry hopping a different temperatures might bring out one flavour over the other.

I'll definitely post the results on this thread. Interesting to hear the angle of ditching whirlpool altogether. Maybe that's an experiment for another day!

 

[Jim Brewster]

I've never really felt as though I get much from the flameout additions. I think it mostly gets lost in the fermentation, but also suspect either my process (BIAB) isn't extracting enough from the hops, or I am not using enough. So I tend to rely on dry hopping and that gives me good results, either a little bit of aroma or lots depending on the recipe.

There is a local brewery that I get mini kegs from and their beers have lots of hop flavour but they assure me they don't dry hop, I can only think they must use a hop back system. Whatever they do it works very well

 

[hoppyscotty]

I wouldn't say that I get nothing from the hopstand/whirlpool just that I didn't really get any noticeable return when I supercharged the amount of hops in a particular recipe, so I'm now questioning the return on investment in time and faff. Especially since the cost of hops is going up you really want to make sure you're squeezing every ounce of goodness from them, leaving nothing behind.

Interestingly I've brewed a clone recipe of Bells Two Hearted a number of times over the last couple of years and its one of my favourite beers, and I'm revisiting that recipe again for this weekend after some time, and just realised there is no whirlpool/hopstand addition with that particular recipe...I always assumed there was and its a beer packed with clean crisp bitterness and plenty of hoppiness.

 

[The Baron]

I do the opposite to you chaps I whirlpool @60c-70c virtually every time with no boil hops unless doing say a English/Bitter ale and have reduced my dry hop to a small percentage as I have found it can unbalance the beer and give a high bitter/IBU perception which is not to my taste

 

[hoppyscotty]

Interesting...this is the flip side of the path I've taken, but I do like very hop forward beers so always chasing that hop flavour and aroma. I've found with very large dry hop additions you do get that initial hop burn astringent bitterness but after a couple of weeks in the keg that subsides quite nicely and leaves you with the hop flavour and aroma so you can push up the hop rates as long as you don't dive into the beer too soon. I think this is only possible if you are able to dry hop and transfer to ket while keeping out the oxygen out, as my experience says if you get oxygen in there then conditioning a highly dry hopped beer for a few weeks would result in some level of oxidation which would get worse very quickly. So being able to condition the beer for a couple or few weeks to let the hop burn subside...and also deal with any after effects of hop creep, is useful if you're pushing up the dry hop rates to extract more hop flavour and aroma.

Also the last few batches of beers I've brewed are American style Pale Ales and IPA's but using the latest British hops that are trying to mimic the flavour profiles of the classic US hops and I've noticed using more of the lower Alpha Acid British hops for bittering on the hot side, like EKG for example, even though I add sufficient quantity to achieve the target IBU, the resulting bitterness in the beer is there i.e. the right level of IBU, but a more sublet bitterness, i.e. not so sharp or harsh as you'd get with a higher AA US bittering hop, but still with a decent bitterness kick and find I can push up the IBU's with such hops without it becoming too harsh, which suits me. I can even trick my wife into drinking higher IBU beers than she would normally drink as she doesn't like bitterness that much. I appreciate there is a whole thing about predicted IBU's from the calculators and what you're actually achieving, but since I can't measure IBU's directly I have to take the values of the calculators on face value, assume there is consistency from batch to batch and go with what I can taste.

There are so many different levers and parameters it just makes my head spin.

 

[The Baron]

At the end of the day it all comes down to personal taste so some like a lot of bitterness some a reasonable level and some a lower level.
We are all different as brewers and drinkers so it is upto each individual to find their own sweet spot and brew to that style.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I’ve done a few hop experiments over time and had very mixed results because there are so many variables.

Clearly there are many, many hops and some hops work better in the boil or in the hopstand or in dry-hopping. Choosing the wrong hops for any stage in the process will give you a false impression. Also, yeast can bring out different flavour compounds in hops so again you can get different results using the same hops but with different yeasts.

Despite all the above I have found that adding hops to the boil at different times can add more flavour, that a hopstand adds more flavour than dry hopping, and that keg hopping adds more aroma than dry hopping. Also that a combination of three types of hops in general is better than fewer or more than three types.

Good luck with your experiment and whatever the result have fun!

 

[AJA]

Despite all the above I have found that adding hops to the boil at different times can add more flavour, that a hopstand adds more flavour than dry hopping, and that keg hopping adds more aroma than dry hopping. Also that a combination of three types of hops in general is better than fewer or more than three types.

I've found this exactly.
I've also found that the new hop extracts (spectrum/incognito) are not a substitute for pellets. They add a ton of aroma but fall flat on flavour.

 

[jamesdn]

Thanks for everyone's comments and ideas so far, a lot of variables to think about.

Being only a couple of years into the HB game, I'm going to keep the bittering and whirlpool hops as I have done in the past, using IBU calcs and whatnot.

For the dry hop experiment, on reflection of above, I'm going to ferment the full volume of wort in 1 single FV to FG, rack half to a keg which has preloaded hops inside (inside a hop rocket of some kind), also purged of oxygen. Keeping both a couple more days to settle again before bottling both vessels. I think this will get the fairest result of comparison, while being able to extract a lot of hop flavour.

I suppose it's like somewhere between dry hopping and keg hopping.

 

[Jim Brewster]

Also that a combination of three types of hops in general is better than fewer or more than three types.

That's interesting. It's rare that I use as many as three hops in a recipe but most of my brews I like to judge a particular hop so tend to use it alone or just one other hop

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

That's interesting. It's rare that I use as many as three hops in a recipe but most of my brews I like to judge a particular hop so tend to use it alone or just one other hop

My experiments were not scientific of course, I just rated the resulting beers from several combinations looking for a winner. I didn’t even notice until later that all the highest scoring beers used three types of hops. If you give it a try let me know what you think

 

[Justin Dean]

You can always use a hop radler when pouring from keg

 

[RichK]

I'm interested in seeing your results from this. I stopped dry hopping some time ago as I wasn't sure if it was worth doing for the style of beer(s) I make. Now, I just do an extended flameout addition.

 

[The Baron]

I think you have hit the nail on the head RichK, too many brewers (although experimentation is ok) dry hop as a norm on styles that should not really have them.
I only do small dry hops on my brews now as it does create bitterness perception that I do not like, I have found solace in whirlpooling

 

[GuyG]

This thread is a very interesting read.

I started brewing in June and as of yet I have not dry hopped at all... the fear of diaceytl formation when bottle conditioning has always worried me.

I have always just done the usual kettle additions and hopstands and have always gotten plenty of flavour...

However, I'm doing an English IPA in a couple of weeks and was thinking I will add a dry hop addition for the first time as it would be true to style to do so.

@The Baron when you say you add a small dry hop addition, I'm interested to know how many grams per litre you are adding... I am doing a 23L batch and was looking at adding 50g... would you say that is alot and a big risk or hop creep?

 

[The Baron]

No I would class 50g dry hop as ok and not too aggressive so you should be ok

 

[GuyG]

Thanks @The Baron

 

[dlowe1992]

I’m really interested in the results of this. As another relative newbie, I’ve also avoided dry hopping until now as I’ve adopted a general rule of leaving the fermentor well alone while it’s doing its work.

Reality is I’m now confident enough I could dry hop before FG is reached, which makes me a bit more relaxed about opening ip for a dry hop addition.

I think another tricky point is in defining what a hop forward beer is. There’s such a spectrum it’s almost a moot term. If you’re brewing a hop bomb NEIPA I guess dry hopping is essential. I would class an APA as a hoppy beer and have found I can brew a decent one with a healthy hopstand addition. Each to their own I guess!

In any case, I’m following with interest!!

Edit - just re-read this and don’t think I quite wrote what I meant!!
A hop forward beer is clearly easy to define. What I should say is a hop forward beer can be very different things. I think it can be easy to get hung up on the idea anything you define as ‘hoppy’ needs a massive dosed dry hop. This (I understand) is true for some beers but not necessarily for blondes, hoppy golden ales, APA’s etc (in my experience)