Dry Hopping

Northern Brewer General
1

I’m going to be putting up a batch of NB’s Extra Pale Ale (extract kit). I decided to add an extra pound of light DME because I’m going to be dry hopping with Citra Hops and wanted to keep it balanced. I’ve never used the Citra Hops so I’m wondering if anyone has any advice as to when to dump them into the secondary. One of the sales people I bump into at NB thinks you shouldn’t leave them in more than 5 days, while some of the kits say to dry hop up to 2 weeks. I followed her advice when I brewed a batch of Dead Ringer IPA and it has a nice flavor, but now I wonder if it wouldn’t have been even better if I left it in 7-days. I’m still a bit of a newbie (just my 10th batch) and I would like more of the citrus character of the hops to come through in the flavor. I look forward to your responses.

2

I think that a lot of people say not to leave them in for longer than a week because then it starts to give off a grassy kind of earthy flavor. I don’t know, I always do it five days out from bottling/kegging.

3

I dry hop with pellets directly into the beer for 2w. Then I dry hop in a ss mesh ball in the keg for its entirety.

4
  1. Citra hops are AWESOME!!!
  2. I almost always dry hop for 2 weeks (sometimes 1 week) in the secondary.
  3. I have on occasion also dry hopped directly in the keg for the duration of the keg. Meaning the hops stayed in the keg the entire time I was drinking from it. I really like doing this. You get a nice big hop flavor and aroma from the first pour to last.

So, no there’s nothing wrong with dry hopping for longer than 5 days. Any grassy flavor that you may get I think would come from a specific hop used. I have gotten some harsh almost astringent flavors from hop bursting (adding large amounts of hops near the end of the boil), which is why I don’t do that any more. I much prefer to add normal additions and load up on the dry hops. Usually 2-3oz or more. And I generally prefer to dry hop with whole hops.

5

[quote=“dobe12”]Any grassy flavor that you may get I think would come from a specific hop used.[/quote]+1 I pretty much only use American types for DHing and leave them in for much longer than five days with no harsh or grassy notes.