What Is Dry Hopping?
Dry hopping is a process in which, after the beer has completed primary fermentation, hops are added back to the beer to steep. Dry hopping adds aroma and flavor without imparting any bitterness to your beer.
How Long to Dry Hop?
Dry hopping is a fantastic way to get the aroma into your beer, but how long is long enough? Hops added to secondary post fermentation can add significant levels of aroma in 24 hours, and it improves for at least 48-72 hours.
After that amount of time, you will still get added aroma, but not as quickly. Some brewers will leave hops in their fermenters for the entire secondary fermentation, but if this will be more than a couple of weeks, this can result in vegetal flavors, such as “grassy” notes or other off flavors.
You can leave hops in the fermenter for a week or two before the off flavors really start to develop. You won’t get a significant increase in hop aroma over the first 72 hours, but if you just can’t get to packaging in that time, it won’t hurt the beer. After 2-3 weeks, it’s really time to get the beer off your hops or you’ll start to see the bad flavors develop.So, the ideal amount of time is about 48-72 hours.
Common Ways to Dry Hop Your Beer
Gun
The torpedo or gun is a separate piece of equipment designed to make dry hopping more controlled and efficient.
The hops are loaded into a hop torpedo or gun, which is essentially a vessel or chamber designed specifically for this purpose. The hop torpedo is then purged with carbon dioxide (CO2) to create an inert atmosphere inside, limiting the hops’ exposure to oxygen. The hop torpedo is then pressurized, and the beer is circulated or passed through the hop torpedo, exposing it to the hops.
This controlled method reduces oxygen exposure while extracting hop oils and flavours quickly. However, there are some drawbacks to using this method. The equipment is costly, and cleaning the hop torpedo takes time because it requires its own Clean-In-Place (CIP) pump and hoses.
Hop PitchingTank
The Hop Pitching Tank, also called dry hopper, hop dosing tank, or bomber, is usually used for dry hopping with pressure for the fermenters. When setting up a brewery from the very beginning, a hop pitching tank can be a smart, low-cost way to improve the fermenting part of the brewing process.
The bottom Butterfly Valve is connected with the dry hopping port on top of the fermenter. The pressure won’t be released during the dry hopping process, which can minimize the negative effect to beer as much as possible. And it also can effectively reduce the hygienic risk.
If you are planning to open a brewery. TIANTAI BrewTech could help you answer your questions and supply the brewery equipment system. We supply 2-150bbl complete beer brewing brewery equipment system including malt milling equipment, brewhouse equipment, fermenters, brite beer tanks, beer bottling machine,beer canning machine, beer kegging machine, hopping machine, yeast propagation equipment. We also supply all auxiliary brewery systems like steam heating pipe and valves, water treatment, filter, air compressor etc. Everything in brewery are all in our list.
If you are planning to open a brewery. TIANTAI BrewTech could help you answer your questions and supply the brewery equipment system. We supply 2-150bbl complete beer brewing brewery equipment system including malt milling equipment, brewhouse equipment, fermenters, brite beer tanks, beer bottling machine,beer canning machine, beer kegging machine, hopping machine, yeast propagation equipment. We also supply all auxiliary brewery systems like steam heating pipe and valves, water treatment, filter, air compressor etc. Everything in brewery are all in our list.
