We Learned a New Brew Trick!

It's time to dry hop! Our latest brewing adventure takes us to the world of pale ales. Much of the popularity of pale ales revolves around the layering of hop flavors. Our friendly neighborhood home brew store suggested we dry hop for this batch of beer.

Dry hopping allows you to add more aromatic hop layers without increasing the bitterness of the beer. Dry hopping is often used when brewing pale ales and IPAs.

For home brewing, the best time to dry hop is during the secondary fermentation period (see our fermentation post). While boiling our wort, we set aside 1 oz of Cascade hops. We made sure to seal our dry hop hops in a baggie and store that baggie in the fridge. When we racked to the secondary, after 2 weeks, we added the extra hops.



When dry hopping Make sure to use a grain sock or nylon bag to keep the hops together. You don't want to have to strain out the hops later (unless you have some filtration procedure, which we do not). It is important to use a sanitized 'hop holder' so you don't introduce 'bugs' to the beer. Once you are done with the secondary fermentation, just toss (garbage, compost, etc.) the hops.