Dry hopping my Pacific ale

[joehedden]

I was in Australia recently and had an amazing pale ale, really refreshing to drink chilled on a hot summer's day. Was thinking that with barbecue season (hopefully) on the way, I would try and create something similar instead of ploughing through the usual few gallons of scrumpy and feeling awful.

After a bit of research on their website and from Aussie forums, I learned all the good work in this brew is done by dry hopping with Galaxy hops, and then bottling straight from the primary with a good amount of yeast still in suspension. I ordered a load of these hops from Australia (seems there are no UK suppliers), and the smell is incredible. Only thing is, don't really know what I'm doing with dry hopping, I was just going to chuck in 10 or 20 g of pellets about 3 days into fermentation (assuming I ferment out in about 5-6 days).

Is this about right? If not can someone please stop me from making a horrible mistake!

Cheers

 

[Chelstonbrewery]

Dry hopping is usually carried out in the secondary fermentation closed vessel while the yeast is settling and the beer clearing. I would say 10 grams is a good starting point. Dry hopping will not increase the bitterness by very much if any. Good gives a good bouquet to the beer and improves the flavour if not overdone.
Good Luck, let us know your result.

 

[richc]

Using dry hops usually involves leaving the beer to ferment for about a week, then racking it into another container. You add the dry hops to this secondary container (often in a sterilised bag of some kind) and then leave for another week before bottling.
I'm personally not convinced that the second container is needed and am experimenting with just adding the bag of hops to the primary fermenter after a week and then leaving until bottling day.