I find you get more fruit and less grass with shorter dry hopping times. I had some problems with grassiness, which I'm not fond of. In the search for tips I remember hearing a podcast... the two important tips were to dry hop (1) short and often (2) at fermentation temperature rather than cold.
Since then I've always dropped them in the fermenter at about day 4 and then racked the beer off to keg at around 8-10. The last beer I dry hopped was only done for about three days... because it was so warm there was heaps of hop particle still in the beer. I racked to a keg, then two days later siphoned to another keg to move it off the hop matter.
Permalink Reply by jt on February 9, 2010 at 2:22pm
Bingo !
Thanks Stu, I had a hayfeild in every pint with one batch I dry hopped for 8 days and abandoned the recipe thread ... might ressurect the thread and brew again.
on that podcast was someone talking about dry hopping (it may have been Matt Bryndilson from Firestone) and i seem to remember him saying that they do several 'batches' of dry hopping for a few days each.
Then I've read somewhere that Rogue dry hop their barleywine for 8 months!
Ive read a bit about 'batch dry hopping' and often wondered why it was done... Seems to have some logic to it, but man, think of all the beer they must lose to hop matter??
This is my Dryhopping schedule and I think my results have improved ten fold since doing this is I to ferment within 8-10 points of termianal gravity (watch the krausen it will tell you) then rack to a 20L Jerry Can with the hops, screw the top on tight and let it do its thing for 3-6 days (all depends on size off balls) Crash cool to zero chuck in some cow hoof keep it there over night and you have brilliant clear beer with f all shit going into keg or bottle (+ Carb Solution). The reason for dry hoping and crash cooling in the same vessel is that the c02 that would of been let into the atmosphere remains in the jerry can and can dissolve back into solution, when you crash cool it all that Hoppy aroma c02 gets reasborbed into solution. The beer will go into the keg at about 1 vol of Co2 + 1 vol of c02, opposed to 2 vos of c02. If you think 'heck 1 vol isnt much' You totally fucking wrong!! Theres my tip. anyone else want to shed some???