I've got an single hop APA (all Columbus) that's been sitting in secondary for a couple weeks: extract+steeping grains, mostly Extra Light DME and a little bit of Crystal 10, US-05. I planned to dry hop for a few days before bottling, so three days ago I added 1 oz Columbus pellets directly to the carboy. I checked out the hops before throwing them in and they looked and smelled great. 48 hours later my beer was a different color. Noticeably darker. What was golden straw with a hint of orange is now solidly amber. Took a sample: tastes okay, perhaps a little too bitter, but no weird off flavors detected. In his chapter on the subject, Palmer has a line or two discussing how over-hopping can affect beer color, but this seems weird to me: a color change from dry-hopping? Has anyone experienced anything like this? Got a theory as to how this might have happened?
When I dry hop my ales I utilize a muslin bag and I dry hop within the primary fermenter. I am guessing that in your situation the hop pellets are ‘breaking up/dissolving’ into the beer and the hop particulate matter is making the beer appear to be darker in color. I think that over time the hop bits will settle to the bottom of your carboy and your beer color will go back to ‘normal’. I would guess that this will take about a week or so for the hop bits to settle. Hopefully somebody else who dry hops the way you did and will provide their experiences. Cheers!
My experience with hop haze has actually been the opposite. It tends to make the beer appear lighter in color, although not much. Dry hopping does cause CO2 to come out of solution. Perhaps, once that happened, more yeast fell out of suspension (CO2 keeps the yeasties floating). Once yeast drops out, beer can appear darker, even if it's clearer.
I think you could be on the right track here. I did notice that the beer has clarified considerably in the past couple days, its now VERY clear, although it does appear much darker.
No scientific info here... but I also seem to remember my last IPA becoming just a tad more amber-colored after dry-hopping. I used 4 oz of pellet hops for that one. I will take a closer look next time I dry-hop.
I can attest that my beers tend to darken a bit after dry hopping. I once split a batch, dry hopping half with pellets and half with whole cones. The beer with whole cones turned out looking like a scotch ale, while the one with pellets looked like a light pale ale. I was really shocked at the difference. I'm assuming the beer darkens because the hops suck up some water. This makes sense as cones absorb more than pellets.
