To Dry Hop or Not

Dry hopping in brewing is the technique of introducing hops to the beer later in the process than is usual. Typically hops are introduced to the beer during the boil, during the boil early hops impart bitterness, those added in the middle to late boil impart flavour and hops added late or at flame-out impart aroma. The aroma and flavour of hops can be quite delicate and dry hopping is used to boost the hop flavour and aroma of a beer. Typically dry hopping can occur in two ways. The most usual way is to dry hop the beer in secondary after the vigorous primary fermentation has completed, the second way is to dry hop beer while it is in its serving keg. The latter is something that I have done with some success in the past by adding a bag of hops to a keg and leaving the hops in the keg during dispensing.

With my latest beer I wanted to do a comparison between a beer that was dry hopped and one that was not. So yesterday I bottled eight beers from my Lady Liberty Pale Ale (straight from Primary) and then transferred the remaining 19 litres to a carboy and dry hopped this with 25g of cascade hops. The carboy will be left for a week before being transferred to a keg and carbonated. I then should be able to do a taste test between the bottled beer and the dry hopped keg beer.

I will report back with my findings in 2-3 weeks.