I have brewed Chinook IPA several times and the last two have added some grapefruit zest to the dry hop. I will brew again in the next day or so but I am thinking of changing up the hops. As I have stated before my wife like a fruity IPA so I bought a couple of different hops to try. I have 2 oz of each, Chinook, Cascade and German Mandarin. My thoughts are this. 1 oz of Chinook at 60 minutes for bittering, 1/2 oz each of Mandarin and Cascade at 10 min and another 1/2 of each at 5 min left. Then dry hop with 1 oz of Cascade and one oz of Mandarin. Anyone with advice and comments please help. I can use all I can get.
IF you have enough fermenters, why not split the brew and dry hop one with Cascade and the other with Mandrin… That will definitely give a sample as to how the hops enhance your brews. Sneezles61
That sounds like a plan. Now the how. Would it be as simple as dividing it as equally as possible after the yeast is added. That doesn’t sound right. More like decide after fermintation. Now another ?. This last brew I put my dry hops and zest in a muslin hop sock. After a few days it didn’t seem as if I was getting anywhere so I dumped it all out of the sock into the fermintor. Bad move. Had a real mess when bottling. Do you get close to the same results using a bag to dry hop just not the sediment? I know cold crashing would help but I don’t have that option at this time.
What are you using as a fermentor? Those are all fine hops but nothing beats fruit like fruit itself. Also give Citra hops a try and work on finding a fruity yeast. The hops are only half of the equation, the yeast is the ultra important part as it is not only creating the alcohol but also many/most of the esters.
While typing this I am drinking a truly fruity beer Lagunitas Dark Swan… pretty tasty and the right amount of fruit/sour. Purchased by my wife because this is how she rolls.
I have one bucket and one big mouth.
Thanks I have considered the depth charge but just haven’t gotten that far along just yet.
Sneez should I split it after fermintation and use half the hops I planned?
just make the beer that your wife wants.
That’s what you am trying to do. Best way.
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My thoughts and what I do is to keep making what wifey likes (and what you like) and experiment with a separate batch. Make one change at a time to understand the effects. As @sneezles61 says, split a batch before pitching the yeast and use different yeasts or dry hop differently. Making beer is like cooking eggs, there’s a zillion ways to do ‘em. If you like ‘em a certain way, make little modifications to see if you can enhance what you like about them.
As for excess goo in the fermenter, I’ve put 5# of cherries in a secondary and put a plastic filter and a nylon sock over the end of the racking tube to filter out the goo when I kegged it.
