I have never experienced the described “grassy” or “vegetal” off-flavors from dry hopping before. But I think I may have it on my hands with my current batch.
I used 3 oz pellets in secondary at 55* for 8 days. I was moderately satisfied with the aroma at that point so I kegged.
It’s been kegged and carbed for one week and it definitely has an off-flavor that is not the desired fresh, floral, citrus effect. I suppose vegetal would fit. It sure was not there pre-dry hop.
I’m a little surprised it would happen with just an 8 day dry hop.
So my question is whether I can hope for it to fade, and if so, any first-hand experience in how long that might take?
I know the Hops book suggests otherwise, but my best dry hopping has been when I start dry hopping in the primary at the tail end of fermentation, so it is blowing off any oxygen trapped in the hops themselves, but retaining the oils.
Believe it or not, I don’t have any experience with either :shock:
I will say that I have experienced the grassiness for sure with c-hops though. In each instance, it went away and turned out great. I feel my IPAs hit stride 3-4 weeks after kegging.
BTW, I found another discussion forum that mentioned that the grassy flavors are worse with pellets because of exposed chlorophyll from the processing of hops into pellets. I guess you don;t get that with whole hops. It also mentioned thatt he flavor should dissipate over time.
I want to update this thread with what ended up happening with the IPA in question.
The grassy notes were quite strong and made the beer somewhat unenjoyable. I let it sit chilled for several weeks with really no significant change.
I found other discussion saying that the flavor could dissipate more rapidly at room temp, so I let the temp come up and left it for three days before tasting. That turned out to make a huge impact and did in fact cause the grassy flavor to nearly completely resolve.
From now on, when dry hopping with pellets I am going to limit the exposure to four days, and I am going to try to time it so there is still a moderate amount of CO2 in solution to help scrub the grassy notes. But at least there does seem to be a way to deal with the problem if/when it comes up.