Dry Hopping

[Northern_Brewer]

My later batch is a 10 gallon brew. It’s nearly ready to barrel and I’ve added 100g of mosaic pellets in a bag a couple of days ago. The pellets smelt fantastic when I opened the packet. But when I sample the beer I can barely taste them. Am I just not adding enough or am I missing some kind of technique to make the process more efficient.
I used 100g of hops at the start of the boil, 100g last 15 min and another 100 to steep for 30 minutes at the end.

Assuming that's imperial gallons, that's 45 litres so you're dry-hopping at a rate of 2.2g/l. If you look at eg how Cloudwater's DIPAs have evolved, the original 2016 version of DIPA v3 had 8g/l of dry hops, but by 2018 they were routinely adding 24g/l of dry hops to their hoppy beers. Now commercial practices don't always work at homebrew scale - the efficiency of hop extraction is different at different scales, and they can throw technology like centrifuges at the problem. But a lot of homebrew NEIPAs are using 10-15g/l of dry hops - if a NEIPA is what you're aiming for.

But when you're hopping at that kind of level, it becomes even more important to have your process nailed down, so you're not "wasting" hop oils which can eg blow off at the height of fermentation. There's been something of a trend recently to cool crash beer after fermentation and then dry-hop, to reduce yeast interference in the dry hop process and to counter the effects of hop creep. See this recent thread, in particular read the paper from Scott Janish on dry-hopping :
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/the-right-time-to-dry-hop.98551/page-2#post-1130129
It's also worth looking at whether your yeast is one that enhances or reduces hop aroma, it might be worth sticking with something like a Chico (US-05/WLP001/1056) whilst you're experimenting with your process as they tend to leave hops alone, whereas other yeasts can "dull" hop expression.

 

[fury_tea]

Anyone who keg hops like @Brew_DD2 do you leave the hops in or do your transfer to a second keg after a few days?

 

[Brew_DD2]

Anyone who keg hops like @Brew_DD2 do you leave the hops in or do your transfer to a second keg after a few days?

I leave in. I have never experienced the worrisome vegetal/grassy flavours (if anything this reduces with time in my experience) and it gives me the flavour that I get with good commercial examples.

I bag my keg hops (allowing for lots of room for expansion), and hop at a slightly higher rate to compensate for any reduction in extraction. I then put the hop bag in a purged keg (nothing too drastic), then closed transfer my beer in from the fermenter followed by another quick purge. Then burst carbonate for a couple of days. Tends to be a little green on first few days/pours, but after that you're in NEIPA heaven.

I surmise that the lack of oxygen ingress prevents any vegetal flavours developing.

It's really worth having a go with if you enjoy those styles of beer.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I leave in. I have never experienced the worrisome vegetal/grassy flavours (if anything this reduces with time in my experience) and it gives me the flavour that I get with good commercial examples.

I bag my keg hops (allowing for lots of room for expansion), and hop at a slightly higher rate to compensate for any reduction in extraction. I then put the hop bag in a purged keg (nothing too drastic), then closed transfer my beer in from the fermenter followed by another quick purge. Then burst carbonate for a couple of days. Tends to be a little green on first few days/pours, but after that you're in NEIPA heaven.

I surmise that the lack of oxygen ingress prevents any vegetal flavours developing.

It's really worth having a go with if you enjoy those styles of beer.

Is that your only dry hop or do you also dry hop in the fermenter/s?

 

[fury_tea]

I leave in. I have never experienced the worrisome vegetal/grassy flavours (if anything this reduces with time in my experience) and it gives me the flavour that I get with good commercial examples.

I bag my keg hops (allowing for lots of room for expansion), and hop at a slightly higher rate to compensate for any reduction in extraction. I then put the hop bag in a purged keg (nothing too drastic), then closed transfer my beer in from the fermenter followed by another quick purge. Then burst carbonate for a couple of days. Tends to be a little green on first few days/pours, but after that you're in NEIPA heaven.

I surmise that the lack of oxygen ingress prevents any vegetal flavours developing.

It's really worth having a go with if you enjoy those styles of beer.

I've done it a few times and not noticed much in the way of vegetal tastes either, and I have an IPA on tap at the moment that has 100g hops in a mesh hop filter. I have a spare keg though and was considering transfering out, just because I've heard that's the done thing...

 

[Brew_DD2]

Is that your only dry hop or do you also dry hop in the fermenter/s?

Both. Dry hop loose just as I'm beginning the cold crash in the fermenter. Once hop matter has dropped out, closed transfer to keg with hop bag in.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Both. Dry hop loose just as I'm beginning the cold crash in the fermenter. Once hop matter has dropped out, closed transfer to keg with hop bag in.

Merci

 

[Clint]

I'm away on hols in Devon and just realised I should have hopped my Summer Breeze before leaving...it'll be fine...it was still bubbling after two weeks so three weeks in the fv won't harm it.

 

[Dutto]

With most kit brews, after fermentation has had two weeks, I make up a Hop Tea and put it in the keg (with a bit of sugar*) before Cold Crashing the brew.

* The Cold Crash is done slowly so that the sugar (about 10g per 10 litre) has two days to build up a positive pressure in the keg before the temperature is dropped to +/-10*C for at least 5 days.

 

[RockTKaz]

I recently was put on to this 5-10-15 theory, not sure if it the right way to go, but I’ll try it.
based on 10 imperial gallons this would be

225g, 450g, 675g approx