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Dry Hopping.
The questions which are usually asked when dry hopping is mentioned are;-
What is dry hopping?
The term dry hopping originated with the
british brewers, and refered to adding hops to the cask shortly before the beer
was shipped to the pubs.
What does dry hopping do to the beer?
Hops contain two particular substances, humulin and lupulin which are commonly
known as alpha and beta acids hops provide a bitter flavour to the beer and
give the drink a clean fresh boquet they also act as a preservitive after
fermentation
How do i go about dry hoping my beer?
The best way to utilize dry hopping is to put
the hops in the secondary fermenter after the beer as been racked away from the
trub (the sedimemt at the bottom of the fermenter which includes hop bits dead
yeast and any materials left behind from the various grains this refers to a
full mash beer) if you wish to customise your kit beer to your particular
tastthe hops can be put into a muslin bag and put into the beer about 3-4 days
into the ferment period. The hops can also be put into the beer loose, this
allows more of the hops to come into contact with the beer giving a better
result however this can clog the system up when the beer needs to be put into
the barrel or bottled, there is some concern among some brewers that putting
un-sterilised hops into the beer may cause bacteria to form however tests show
that this is very unlikely due to the fact that at this stage the beer as
almost fermented out the alcohol and the low ph helps to ward of any bacteria
from the un-sterilises hops and when left to sit on the beer it allows the oils
to diffuse into the beer one more question to be concidered is how much hops do
i need , on a 5gall brew normally about 1-2 ozs (28-58g) may be required but
the real answer is "as much as you want"
What type of hops should i use?
Once you have decided on the variety of hops
the next question to consider is the form in which the hops should take the
main types apart from the fresh leaf type are pellets, plugs and oil.the fresh
hops have already been dealt with. Pellet hops these can easily be weighed and
are probably the easiest hops to pour through a small knecked fermenter they
can be put into a fine bag but this will have to be very fine to collect the
powder when they disolve it may be better to allow them to disolve in the
bottom of the fermenter and to be discarded when the beer is finnally racked to
the barrel or bottles. A word of warning because the pellets break down very
quickly they provide thousands of nucleation sits for the c02 in the beer to
latch itself onto this can cause excessive frothing . Plug type hops were
originally used for dry hopping these again were easy to measure out ,easy to
put into a bag and easy to put into a small necked fermenter hop extract these
are concentrated processed extracts of hop bittering resins they can be added
after the fermentation to ajust the bitterness of the finnished beer
Finnaly if you are a fan of hop flavour and
aroma you have to try dry hopping your homebrew.
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