Wet Hop or Dry Hop?

[mumblecrunch]

A friend of mine has a pile of Challenger hops that he harvested from his yard. I have an American Brown Ale in the fermenter that dried out more than I wanted it to (1.007ish vs 1.016 thanks to missing my initial mash temp way low) and has more esters than it should (fermented with WLP-041 at about 70*F instead of 66*F). We seem to have a potentially mutually beneficial situation in front of us. I'm thinking I can probably make the beer a touch more drinkable with a bit of a hop infusion and he's looking for somewhere to put his hops (he's not quite brewing yet).

The question I have is, should I just throw a whack of wet hops into the fermenter or should I dry them first? I have a food dehydrator with a 35*C setting, so it's no big deal to dry them (in fact, I'll be drying what I don't use and vacuum packing them for my friend's later use). I'm also not that worried about liquid loss because I've got 22-23L of beer in the fermenter. I have read that wet hopping can give more intense results, but that it can also lead to grassy flavors.

Anybody have an opinion on whether I should wet hop or dry hop? Also, for a dry hop I'd probably do 2oz; any suggestions on an amount for a wet hop? It's a 5 gallon batch.

[Ladd]

Wet hop or dry hop is pretty much personal preference. I like both. I dried mine this year just because I wasn't ready to use them when I harvested but otherwise I'd have just tossed them in. If you wet hop, add about 10-12oz (~5-6x more wet than dry), which will give you around the same amount of hop material as if you used 2oz dry.

Hope that helps! Let us know how it turned out!

[Keith]

Wet hop it now in a bag that you can remove, and dry some of them and then dry hop it. Get the best of both worlds.

[chalmers]

Have you used wet hops before, or drunk some of the local ones fresh?

Of course it depends, but the several times I've used them, and most commercial brews I've drunk hopped with them, I find to be too grassy for my taste. I'm sure others would/do like (love!) them, but the grassy/chlorophyll character, I've learned, is not for me.

[Albert]

Wet hops may not soak up as much beer..give you a better bottling volume?

[mumblecrunch]

Thanks for the feedback, gang. My friend is interested in seeing what a wet hop is like and the beer isn't great to begin with so it's no real loss if I make it worse. So I'm going to go with Keith's suggestion and wet hop with 5-6oz in a mesh bag for a couple of days while I dry the rest, then dry-hop with an oz of dry. It'll be interesting if nothing else.

[mumblecrunch]

So, I put 200g of wet Challenger in a nylon mesh bag into a marginally drinkable beer (waaay too thin, bit of an odd anise flavor) on Thursday night. It was floating up pretty high so I grabbed some glass beads at Michaels yesterday afternoon, soaked 'em in sanitizer for a while, and threw them into the hop bag to sink it. I took a sample at that point and I'm not sure I could taste anything useful out of the hops, but the beer almost certainly tasted worse. Further, I only noticed after putting them in the beer that the beads I bought have a "lustre" finish which I have since become aware is a coating that isn't necessarily durable (e.g., it can wear or dissolve away). And I can't find any toxicity information about it.

So between the most recent sample tasting terrible and not knowing whether the beer is even safe to drink at this point, I think I'm going to cut my losses and call this one a drain pour.

The rest of the hops dried nicely, so at least there's a couple ounces of dried hops out of the deal.

[chalmers]

Bring it to Hoptoberfest, those people will drink anything!

In all seriousness, sorry to hear about the multiple setbacks! I bet there will be a couple of wet hopped beers at HF, so there will be some chances to try them, if your friend is able to attend.