I brewed a Black IPA on Saturday. The instructions in the recipe for the Dry Hopping are: "Ferment at 65 degrees for 14 days. Let temp rise to 68 degrees and add the first dry hops (1 oz each Citra and Amarillo). After 3 more days, add the second dry hops (1 oz each Citra and Amarillo) for 4 more days." After doing some research I have discovered that a lot of people pick up "grassy" notes from dry hopping if they are left for up to 7 days. Would it make more sense to just add all the hops together and let them "stew" for 4 days total? Also, would this be beneficial to only open the fermenter up once to add the hops to reduce oxidation? Thanks in advance!!
Staged dry hopping where both stages are post fermentation isn't really a common thing, and personally I don't see any good logic behind it. I would recommend doing it all at once.
I do about 3 days. Here's a good read about keeping it short: http://scottjanish.com/a-case-for-short-and-cool-dry-hopping/
I have dry hopped for much longer than 7 days on many occasions and I have never perceived "grassy" in any of those beers. For commercial brewers who ferment in very tall CCV tanks it may make sense to stage dry hop additions. For the homebrew scale there really isn't the same 'need' here. Add them all at once if you want. One other aspect to keep in mind is dry hop contact time can be impacted by the aspect of hop creep. The hops added during the dry hop have enzymes that will further ferment the beer in the presence of yeast. The consequences of hop creep are twofold: Perceptible diacetyl in the packaged beer Potential for 'bottle bombs' if you package via bottle conditioning You can read more about hop creep: https://www.morebeer.com/articles/Hop_Creep Cheers!
I'm brewing an ale right now and intend to dry hop simultaneously with the D rest. Three days, then into the keg.
I've dryhopped in a corney for weeks and all was well. The only thing I've found to watch for with dryhopping is with my temp storage. The room in basement I store bottled beer (unfridged) is ok generally, except during summer. Gets warmer and that hop creep or whatever can give some volcanos. So I don't dry hop in summer.
