Dry Hopping!

[BigWilley]

I rely on natural carbonation for all my beers,and I dry hop my pale . I have always dry hopped directly before bunging the fermentor to avoid having to bleed off the pressure after fermentation subsides. This can be tricky as an active ferment doesn't take kindly to agitaion, but it has produced excellent results. I did worry about losing hop aroma during the yeast settling period but my results were good. On the last batch I needed to harvest yeast from the pale, so I waited for fermentation to subside harvested and bled pressure off and proceeded with my normal dry hop. My observation is that the aroma is much more pronounced in the beer where I dry hop during active fermentation. This would seem to be counter intuitive but maybe the agitation during fermentation mixes the dry hops better. Any ideas or personal observations? Also check out my post under first wort hopping as I started this technique on this same beer, mostly due to what I read here.

[BrewerTL]

My personal observation has been that dry hopping about 3/4's of the way thru fermentation gives me the best results. If I wait until later in the fermentation, the results are still good, but not as good. You're right, though, dry hopping at this stage can be tricky, and messy if you're not careful.

[dick murton]

Do whatever gives you the characteristic you want. British ale brewers traditionally dry hop in cask, i.e. when the beer is pretty low in residual yeast, but I have hopped pre and post yeast recovery with good effect. The problem with hopping before is that the yeast is likely to be dirty, and is not really suitable for repitching and so generally have hopped after cropping, before warm maturation and final chilling. Other than that....

Cheers

[Brewdoctor]

Dry Humping

It is the ethanol that the yeast has produced that extracts the essential oils of dry hops. More alcohol=more hop oil extraction. No hop polyphenols are contributed relative to the boil; however, some often note of "a vegetable matter like essence" resulting from hops sitting in the brew for too long (5 days or over).

But, of course, as we all know, it all depends on the brew type and hop strain; if you do something and the results are successful, then that is the proper method!

Cheers! -Doc