100% dry-hopped beers

Beers without hops have been made many times, primarily long ago when beer first came around, hops were not apart of most recipes. It was only until later when they were discovered and used as preservatives and or to balance the sweetness. Now the purpose of hops in certain beers to add balance, think maltier based beers. Without hops you would have a sugary mess, especially at high ABV.

Dry hopping largely only imparts aroma to the beer. Flavor is not necessarily drawn out in this stage. Think about oil and water, they don't mix well.

Hops boiled for a long duration(think 45-60 min) draws out bitterness due to isomerization of the oils, especially if you have hops with high alpha acid concentrations.

Finishing hops is where all the flavor comes in to play, which can come from partial boil, or even adding hops in the knock out stage(add hops when your about to stop boiling). Adding in knockout is more dry hopping but the heat still slightly isomerizes some of the oils and impacts a little more flavor.

You CAN make a beer without hops. It's how the first beers ever made, were made.

If you were going to make a beer with the only hop additions being dry hopped it would need to be very low in ABV otherwise there would be no balance of bitter and sweet.

 

hmmmmmm sounds horrible.

 

I don't disagree dry hopping won't produce flavor but I think you're wrong that flavor is only produced from 25-30 minute additions. Many homebrewers, myself included, swear by late additions with 5-10 minutes left. 30 minute additions are kind of a waste in my opinion. They provide no aroma, less bitterness, and less flavor, IMO.

 

I meant that flavors are only attributes by hop additions from roughly 30 mins to 0 mins in the boil. Should have made that more clear!

I'm a homebrewer myself and for IPAs I usually do a 30 min addition for half bitter half flavor. Otherwise, my flavor hop additions are at 15, 5 and flameout.

 

Ok. However, despite how people perceive things, dry hopping adds no flavor. so a 100% dry hopped beer with no previous hop additions would be a malty mess that might just smell nice, as others have said.

Aroma might alter flavor but the fact that dry hopping adds no hop oils to the beer means that no flavor will come out from dry hopping. Plain and simple.

I've also had beers which smelled like shit but the flavor was fantastic, example Prairie Funky Galaxy. So going on the premise that smell will alter the taste of a beer so dramatically to make it good is not a sound backing. You might get a nice smell from a beer but it doesnt mean the beer will taste good.

 

Well dry hopping does add hop oils to the beer, its just that they are volitile hence why the add to the aroma. Dry hopping just doesn't isomerize the alpha acids and a 100% dry hopped beer would be akin to adding hops to a shot or two of whiskey without any barrel notes. Sweet boosy and a punch of hops on the nose and the worst hop burps of your life.

 

Idk if you have ever had an over dry hopped beer or not, but when you over dry hop a beer, all you have is aroma. You still have to have a solid amount of finishing hops to actually back up the aroma or you going to have a misleading beer. I.E. it smells amazing but tastes like water.

Not everything tastes the way it smells and not everything smells the way it tastes.

 

I know that most of Stone's beers (or all) only have one bittering addition then a flameout/dry hop addition. Zero during the boil would produce much too sweet of a beer.

 

I want bittering and aromatic hops in my beer!

 

...Or you could just learn to like hops.

 

It's probably been said but if you don't bitter with something you are going to have a sweet mess of a beer. So a dry-hopped gruit or something would be the other shot at something decent tasting. (Maybe, maybe a table beer but I doubt it)

 

Perhaps I misused the word "flavor" to refer to a broader perception. Dry-hopping obviously makes a difference in the beer at cooler temperatures – something is being extracted. The initial point, broadly, was that I don't think the OP had any expectation for hop taste or bitterness, so there's nothing "impossible" or contradictory about asking for an only-dry-hopped beer.

 

Well said, I was going to make a similar comment.

 

I don't think sweetness would be a problem, as long as it is low gravity.

I'd try a test, take a Coors Light bottle, through in a couple hop pellets of your choice, re-cap and wait one month.

 

I know some brewers who would disagree with you on that one. It was my understanding that what you say is true but, when I worked as a Brewer's Assistant for a certain local brewery, I brought it up one day and the brewers said, "No, it adds a little bit of hop flavor." Wasn't about to argue with them since I have little homebrewing experience.

 

Dry-hopping certainly does add flavor to the beer. We perform hop trials with new hops by dry hopping kegs of Unfiltered Wheat Beer. UWB only receives a bittering addition on the brewhouse with no late hops for flavor/aroma. The samples we pull from the kegs after dry-hopping UWB exhibit hop flavor from dry hopping and have soluble hop oils in solution. I can confirm this 100% as we run GCMS tests on the beer to analyze hop oil quantities.

 

Thanks for clearing that up!

 

It sounds like a good a project. Do you brew beer? If you do, I would think this would be a good project to set up experiments. Someone suggested sampling saison, but I would suggest brewing a saison, and only dry hopping it. I am a novice brewer myself, so I have a hard time suggesting how to set up experiments (like what type of hops to use, and how much, should you change anything else?). I will say there is a brewery here in the hill country part of Texas called Real Ale. And they make a blonde ale called Fireman 4. It's a nice blonde, sweet (but not too sweet), almost no hops at all. And they have a Fireman 4^2 (four squared). Same beer with lots of dry hoping. I love it. So I hope this encourages you to try it, play around with the recipe, and despite some of the not-positive comments here, get back to us and lets us know how your product turned out, and ask for feed back.