Lost hop aroma during fermentation

[paulg]

thanks for the reply cazamodo
,if I had looked properly I would have seen the link to briarbank in your postings

[YeastWhisperer]

The Americans use a randaliser...

Some Americans use a Randlizer; however, most American brewers are using hop bursts and hop stands in conjunction with dry hopping to achieve big hop aroma and flavor. Many modern American brewers are using between 250 and 500grams of hops per 19L of beer to achieve the over the top hop flavors and aromas that tend to dominate the market today. This trend is a big part of the reason why we keep experiencing shortages of specific hop cultivars.

[AnthonyUK]

The Americans use a randaliser...

Many modern American brewers are using between 250 and 500grams of hops per 19L of beer to achieve the over the top hop flavors and aromas that tend to dominate the market today.

And we wonder why there could be a shortage of hops

[Hawksy]

After much experimentation we've found dry hopping at 6 celsius for 5 days gives much more hop aroma and less off flavours than at higher temperatures. It takes longer at this low temp but the results are worth it! When you go higher you kiss goodbye to a large amount of those wonderful but volatile hop oils because they become unstable, chemically change and are less readily dissolved in your brew.

[verno]

I was reading this with interest. I have a beer split between 2 FVs (brewed sunday) and I was planning to lightly hop one and strongly hop another once fermentation had completed. I think I might now split the hops on weight between the two but use a hop tea for one and just chuck in the hops (in a muslin) in the other.

Its a citra clone with only citra, so should give a good view if one is a more powerful technique than the other. I will let you know in a few weeks and months.

[subfaction]

After much experimentation we've found dry hopping at 6 celsius for 5 days gives much more hop aroma and less off flavours than at higher temperatures. It takes longer at this low temp but the results are worth it! When you go higher you kiss goodbye to a large amount of those wonderful but volatile hop oils because they become unstable, chemically change and are less readily dissolved in your brew.

I wonder if part of this effect is by getting down to that lower temp you have already crashed out the majority of the yeast cells, so when you add the hops, the hop oils don't coat as many of the yeast cells, and then flocculate out.

So you might just be ending up with more oils in suspension than if you dry-hopped at a higher temp due to this.

I've heard that some commercial US breweries cold crash or filter the yeast out before dry hopping. You loose the oxygen scrubbing benefit of active yeast, but the really hoppy brews tend to be at their best younger so perhaps don't show signs of post fermentation oxygen before they are gone.

[gibbiem]

Funny I've just seen this, I've got a brew in at the minute and was thinking about crashing then dry hopping! Defo gonna try this method now

[barry44]

I've just transferred my beer from primary to secondary to dry hop for the first time.

I usually dry hop in the primary but I read the kernel recipe on brewuk and they suggest getting the beer off the Yeast prior to dry hopping.

I'll drop the temp tomorrow.

[verno]

I was reading this with interest. I have a beer split between 2 FVs (brewed sunday) and I was planning to lightly hop one and strongly hop another once fermentation had completed. I think I might now split the hops on weight between the two but use a hop tea for one and just chuck in the hops (in a muslin) in the other.

Its a citra clone with only citra, so should give a good view if one is a more powerful technique than the other. I will let you know in a few weeks and months.

Just a quick update on this, its still early days, as its only 2 weeks post bottling but I can't really tell a difference. To be honest the hop flavour coming through isn't nearly as much as I had hoped for, I don't think I used nearly enough hops but its a lesson for next time. If anything changes in 4 weeks I will let you know.

[Padalac]

If you are after more hop aroma and flavour, you will get it from the kettle as well as the dry hop. Quantity is not everything its quantity and utilisation (which depends on technique).

You can dry hop of course but there are limits to dry-hopping so for the best result you want both late additions and dry hopping. Ferment will strip out some of the kettle hop flavour and aroma so to make up for that you can increase the hoppiness out of the kettle by increasing your late additions - I am now pushing all the bittering forward to 10 minutes and readjusting the quantity to achieve the same IBUs this requires a lot more hops but gives a wonderful flavour and aroma. Second is dry hopping. Dry hopping technique is as important as quantity though - dropping most of the yeast first, splitting your quantity into multiple additions, using pellets or paste rather than whole cones will all increase your dry hop utilisation.

On the temperature front - a lot of people - like vinnie from russian river (creator of pliny the elder) - state that you get better utilisation by dry hopping at room temperature, but they are removing as much yeast as possible before doing this. the hop oils cling to the yeast so when this floccs out you are losing dry hop character// I'd be interested to hear peoples view on the temperature though!

I was struggling to get a lot of character from dry hopping but now i am racking off the yeast first and shaking the beer to keep the hops in suspension. Also splitting it into multiple additions adds a lot.

[verno]

Thanks Padalac, thats really interesting. I actually compared some notes to a nice hoppy IPA I have made that has no dry hopping but has lots of hop aroma and flavour. The main difference was that involved late hopping and hop steeping and probably a slightly higher weight of hops per volume of beer.

I did wait until ferment had completed before adding the hops to the FV and tried a hop tea but they were whole hops. Next time I will try to get pellets or blend the hops and then see if that changes. In terms of temperature, one of the above posts had the following "After much experimentation we've found dry hopping at 6 celsius for 5 days gives much more hop aroma and less off flavours than at higher temperatures"

[Jonnyconga]

Interesting stuff. I've read or heard that lots of us hoppy brewers dry hop 2 or 3 times in succession to concentrate the hops flavour and aroma in there.

I tried doing a hop tea a couple of times and found it gave an awesome fresh hop flavour and aroma to the beer. I used Amarillo. I read that below 80 deg c is the best as this doesn't extract much bitterness from the hops.