Where does the dry hop go?

[matthuds]

My quest for a hoppy American style pale ale continues.

I brewed a simple malt bill mostly pale with some munich and a tiny bit of crystal. (dont have the exact numbers with me.)
Water at 50ppm CaC03 ish treated with campden over night and 1tsp of Gypsum in the mash.

Small bittering, large flavour and flame out addition Citra and Galaxy with a 15min hop stand at 75c.

Strong ferment 2pkgs of rehydrated US-05 for 2 weeks.

After crash cooling with gelatin to strip out yeast I split the batch... 1/2 with no dry hopping went from fermenter too bottle, and 1/2 with 30g of Citra and 30g Galaxy dry hopped for 1 week (pellet, which I thought was the key as I have previous dry hopped with leaf.).

Primed to 2vols and bottled. Stored at room temp for 3 weeks and tried each.

The difference was mind blowing! The no DH batch was good and had a subtle hoppy flavour from the late additions. The DH batch had massive hop aroma and the citrus I wanted. I thought I had finally cracked it!

Another week (at room temp) and I was excited to try my awesome beer again. Popped open one of each to compare again... both beers now tasted worse and pretty much the same. The background hop flavour was a little more muted and the citrus aroma had pretty much completely gone.

I know that hop aroma fades over time but I thought this would be months not a week? "Drink it young" in the first 4 weeks is NOT a solution for me!
Is this something to do with the bottle conditioning process? I noted the beer seemed a little hazier at week 4 is the yeast doing something to the hop oils?
Would kegging shomehow help this process (minimising yeast activity by force carbing) as I think I might start kegging to save storing hundreds of empty bottles?
Am I introducing too much 02 at some point and speeding up staling? although I am very careful.

I have noticed on all my previous beers they taste amazing after 3 weeks in the bottle and then by week 4-5 its all down hill. Surely they should have a longer shelf life?

Sorry for the long post but just want to get in as much detail as possible, I'm loosing the will ATM!!

[Nitro Jim]

Just out of interest, have you bottled in glass or PET?

[matthuds]

Brown glass 500ml crown caps. I do use an old school "hamer" style capper because the "lever" style one I had kept cracking bottles.
Not sure if hammering the bottles drives the headspace oxygen into the beer? Or auto siphon seal is crap and oxidising beer on transfer?
Not sure if I am barking up the wrong tree all together with oxidation?

I am planning to start keging so I can sample more frequently and note just how the beer changes.

[simon12]

I can't help but about 18 months ago I made a single hop amarillo beer which was fine for about a month them suddenly went tasteless, never found a reason.

[Kev888]

Some styles of beer are better reasonably fresh (such as wheat beer IMO) and yes hop aroma does gradually fade from the outset, but for 'all' your beers to get worse after only week 4 or 5 doesn't sound right at all (in fact some of my higher ABV and IBU brews are still improving/maturing up to about then). Its hard to guess why, I wonder if you may have an infection creeping in?

I'm not sure what affect your gelatine may or may not have on the dry hopping (I don't use it myself) but if I understand correctly it means you are crash cooling before dry hopping? Some people do dry hop cool, but FWIW I've always had much better results from doing it at fermentation temperature.

Stainless kegs are quite good for preserving hop aroma, but they aren't magic - it still fades over time. That said, they do have some potential advantages: if you force carbonate you don't need to keep them warm to prime and in my experience warmth causes the aroma to drop away sooner, you can dry hop in the keg itself, and dedicated hop fans can use a hop-rocket/randalizer when dispensing.

[matthuds]

Cold crashed with gelatin for 3 days, moved to secondary with pretty much 0 head space. Then dry hopped in there and straight to bottles. Admittedly all of my beers have been similar hoppy pales, I really wanna nail the style.

[Hanglow]

If it's carbonated then store as cold as possible. Beer stales far faster at warmer temps and it's worse for us homebrewers as we tend to get much more oxygen into our beers when bottling than the pros do


But yeah you should still have a noticablely bigger nose on the DH one at five weeks

[tuffty22]

Storing at room temp for 3 weeks is excessive for me for that style. American Pale ales are ready to drink in 2 weeks in my opinion.

I bottle condition for a week at room temp then move to the garage for storage for a week. Then fit as many as I can in my cold fermentation fridge. I find another weeks conditioning on top of the initial week at room temp is plenty.

Saying that we are now only talking about a weeks difference to my method but like other posters have mentioned the hop aroma diminishes each day but no way should they be the same after that amount of time.

[matthuds]

There is still a bit of a difference in flavour but the DH aroma I loved has gone from smelling like a bag of hops to "I think they smell different"