Dry Hopping Rate Diminishing Return

Paging Dave (@telejunkie)!

Cheers!

 

I find the happy place to be 6 oz., but 1.5 oz. more wouldn't hurt. That said, I'd use them on the hot side instead. What do your kettle additions look like?

 

Do you keg? 2.5oz would be a nice keg dry hop addition

 

I would save them....
Hell, I'd probably toss em in....

 

Like @EvenMoreJesus, I typically do 6 oz dry hops. I can't provide any personal experience with higher amounts, because I've never done it (mostly due to the fact that I sometimes have trouble fitting even 6 ounces of leaf hops into my carboy without overflowing the beer). I will say that with 6 ounces, my IPAs taste just as, if not more, hoppy than commercial examples. I doubt you'd get much more character out of the extra 2.5 ounces, but if you wont use them otherwise...

 

. . . plus 5.5 ounces for DH (maybe 7.5 DH) . . . I would say you'll need a safety harness when you drink this. Citra is mighty aggressive. Yes it's good, but it has earned it's aggressive reputation.

To answer your question; My experience is diminishing returns start with dh'ing above 2 ounces (5 gal batch). I'm sure four ounces will not give you twice as much hop aroma as two ounces. I tend to use 2-3 ounces and have been pleased. I also find this true for the late additions. My last IPA was 2 ounces at flameout and 2 ounces DH (all Galaxy) and it has very sharp hop flavor/aroma. Any reason you're not whirlpooling at a lower temp?

 

DH away

 

Are kegging? Because another way to go is dry hop twice. Once in the primary, and then again in the keg.

 

Sometimes. More is actually too much.
Only one way to find out though.

 

Toss them in.

 

Ive only been disappointed with too many dryhops a few times and generally use 4 to 7 oz. the few times I was disappointed I'm pretty sure my hops had just gotten old. Also certain hops give a serious licorice flavor for me when overused. Could just be me but I don't like that

 

i made a 5 gallon batch of a West Coast Style. used 3oz at dry hop and didn't lose much more than i already was going to from whirlpooling. i ended up with 4.25 gallons, maybe could have hit 4.5 gallons without a dryhop but i still ended up with 19 bottles of a combination of 16/22oz bottles.

i plan on making 5.5 gallon IPA batches from here on out to account for loss of beer

 

5 oz is where I hit an aroma wall. Having added as much as 12oz of hops as a dry hop addition I can say with certainty that I wasted 7 oz of hops on that beer. That being said, you could throw those extras in as a hopstand or whirlpool addition.

 

Have u tried that with (2) 6oz additions (ferment and dh) ?
Just wondering as I haven't seen much difference either way...still a waste imho

 

I would say it depends on the specific hops and how old they are. If they are old and have low oil content I could see adding a ton while if they are something like fresh cryo hops, I'd be wary of adding 7.5 ozs. I've heard people using 4+ozs of fresh cryo and their beer smelling like a hop pellet.

 

The beer in question used 3oz at day 3, 6, 9, & 12. Stupid amounts of dry hopping really. I will never do it again.

 

Jason, FWIW I agree that this is a "stupid" amount of hops for dry hopping. Having stated that @invertalon has pretty consistently posted about the 'shit-ton' of hops he uses for dry hopping so...

Cheers!

 

Yeah, my common hopping rate for my IPA/DIPA's are upwards of 12-20oz total. I have been slowly dialing back, but my most recent pale used 12oz of Citra. 8oz between two dry hops alone, 2.5oz at flame out and the rest as boil additions. I have used smaller dry hop additions which still deliver awesome aroma (hell... my Pils uses no late/dry hop and about 4-6oz total and smells fantastic). So I am not against being delicate.

Since I buy my hops in bulk by the pound, I repackage by 3-4oz increments and once I open flavor/aroma hops, I try to use them all without repackaging over and over. So sometimes, quantity is driven by my "rounding". Lol

But as I have stated in the past, once I start going a bit more hefty with my hopping rates, the beers just tend to be more pungent and "fresh", longer. It takes me a solid 2-3 months to kick a IPA keg (I have 4 taps on...), and typically it tastes nearly as awesome at the end as the beginning. So to me, that extra $3-5 in hops for a batch to throw in 3-5 more ounces, it's worth it. My batch costs are pretty damn cheap anyway, given everything I buy is bulk... So not really worried on the hop price adder.

 

I had a very raw hop presence in that beer, what some call hop burn, and once it conditioned in bottles long enough to overcome that issue I had lost quite a bit of hop presence. I think two additions @ 3oz maximum will suffice.

 

I was just about to bring this up. I've had some poor local examples of a Juicy, hazy NEIPA's and that's when I had my first experience with Hop Burn. Very sharp acidic taste that burned all the way down, and lasted for a good few minutes. Wasn't very pleasant. I just made a NEIPA with 6oz of hops at flame out around 180 degrees, currently fermenting and smells lovely. I was thinking of DH with an ounce of Citra and Simco, and possibly Nelson Sauvin but I want to avoid the Hop Burn as much as possible.

 

Two oz of each split into two additions would suffice. One on day 3, one on day 7 and package day 14.

 

FWIW, I have never had hop burn even at my hopping levels. Only with hydrometer samples, but never with finished beer. Too young, perhaps?

 

I struggle with this sentence. I have built recipes around 2.5 oz of citra. But if that holds no appeal for you, maybe look for a different way to add them: whirlpool at different temps, fementation hop, keg hop. Personally, though, I'd probably vacuum seal and freeze them, and then open BeerSmith and start making a sessionable Citra-focused recipe. Challenge yourself to make something interesting and enjoyable out of what remains.

 

Did this beer use lupulin powder/cryo hops, by chance? Every single one of the beers I've experienced hop burn in have used lupulin powder, I'm pretty sure. Not a fan of the stuff.

I use 12-15 ounces of total hops in my IPAs typically, NE or otherwise, and I've never had this hop burn in my beers. I always wait 2 weeks post-pitch to take a reading, but I've never noticed it in my hydrometer samples either.

 

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/lamplighter-brewing.450006/unread
So here's an interesting thread going on in the New England forum. A up and coming local brewery just responded to why one of their beers dramatically changed in clarity.

You can see the the photos on Page 3. The brewers response is the last one. He basically claims that the clarity is due to a base malt change and a generation change of the yeast. It went from 6th to fresh. Nothing else changed apparently in the process.

 

Talking directly with commercial brewers myself who make NE IPA's I have picked their brain a few times about their processes and whatnot. They have had a few batches that have gone "clear" unexpectedly, with no changes in recipe/hopping. Yet the yeast batch is different (they would pitch a fresh batch each time, no yeast harvesting). So, variance in the yeast strain, even the same strain, would cause the difference for them as well.

 

Good question, I'm not sure. I didn't ask and didn't see it mentioned in the description.

 

Seriously, I with that amount of Citra, and a bit of something else for bittering, I could easily brew up a refreshing hop-forward blonde, pale, wheat, or saison. Simple grain bill, bitter appropriately, .5oz @10min, 1oz @ FO/whirlpool, 1oz dryhop. With something as potent as Citra, that's all you'd need to get the point across.

 

change that 1minst to whirlpool?

 

Some of us only brew IPAs.

Kidding, but seriously OP, you don't have only brew single hop beers. In fact, I usually don't use any more than 4-8 oz of a single hop in my IPAs even though I use 13+ oz total for a 5 gallon batch; I prefer the flavor I get from blending hops. My last IPA had some Belma, Chinook, and Mosaic, all because I had small amounts of each in the freezer.

My vote, save the extra hops and combine them with leftovers from other batches. At 2.5oz per batch, you'd only have to brew ~5 hoppy beers before you get a "freebie"/clean out the freezer brew, assuming you usually buy hops by the pound.