Hopping Experiment - Poll time

Wouldn't be a stand alone piece, but maybe included in a story down the line. Would just be one result, far from being truly relevant, but hopefully fun for attendees none the less. Will definitely provide the results here though.

Pellets…girlfriend would freak out if I used leaf since I usually have probably 6-12 pounds of hops in our freezer at any given time…also pellets keep longer too…which is a big bonus when buying bulk.

 

Right…so testing the theory…a lot of folks seem to favor the split of dry hops these days with at least some of the dry hops going in while fermentation is still active:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...a-poll-27-fermentation-dry-hop-timing.431179/
70-80% attenuation seemed to be the consensus from the BA poll for brewing a NE IPA.

 

So brewed a fairly basic Pale Ale for this experiment. OG = 1.055, FG = 1.013 with equal parts (50 mL) Nottingham yeast slurry split between 3 fermenters. All three fermenters were pitched at 70F and fermented at 68F, all three fermenters had just over 4 gallons.

Roughly 56 hours post pitching, the SG stood at 1.024 in all fermenters. Fermenter #1 received 14 grams each Mosaic, Citra & Azzaca. Fermenter #2 received 7g each the same hops. Fermenter #3 received no dry hop at this point. Beer was left for three days on dry hops to finish fermentation, swirling the fermenters once a day. I racked the 3 fermenters into CO2 purged kegs and each beer stood at 1.013. Keg #1 (from fermenter #1) received no dry hops, Keg #2 received 7 g each of those previous hops placed in paint strainer bags and tied off with floss to hang in the fermenter. Keg #3 got the same treatment with 14 g each of the same hop lineup. Dry hops were left in the keg for 3 days, swirling kegs once per day. The three kegs then received 3 days at 12 psi again, swirling a few times a day and a 2.5 hour drive I was hoping to get to near full carbonation

Results….these were not tasted blind. While i didn't get an official tally from the 35 attendees of the seminar, the general consensus was that the beers were undercarbed. Beer #1 had a bit more carb (was on a different regulator). Beer #1 also seemed to have more comments on it than either of the either two. But very few people could detect much difference between the three beers. In a tasting done with some staff members, #3 may have won slightly in the aroma department and #2 in the flavor department. But #1 had the most carb and profile seemed more robust than the other two, so results were flawed.

Conclusion…unfortunately such a slight error as not getting the carbonation right flawed what to me was one of my better run experiments. The clear lack of a consensus though on the profiles did indicate though that the yeast & CO2 scrubbing wasn't as significant a problem for Beer #1 as I and many others may have thought.
If I were to try this again, I would probably bump up the hops in the dry hop phase a bit to make them stand out a bit more and get possibly muddled with the whirlpool hops.

If anybody else who was in the seminar has input, I would love to hear it!