The Ultimate Guide for Dry Hopping Your Home Brewed Beer
Tldr; see below for the 10 Easy Steps for Dry Hopping Your Home Brewed Beer
Introduction
Welcome to our ultimate guide for dry hopping your home brewed beer. We’re going to make a wild and crazy guess here – and that guess is that you love hoppy beers. Of course you do, or you wouldn’t be reading this article! So if you’re a hop lover and new to the world of home brewing, then you should try dry hopping your beer. While the term “dry hopping” may sound exotic, it’s actually a simple technique that any home brewer can put to good use. Dry hopping is simply the process of adding hops to your fermenter either during or after the primary fermentation, and then allowing the hops to remain in the beer for a few days while the hop aromas and flavors diffuse into the beer. As a home brewer, unlike professional brewers, you have no restrictions. You are limited only by your creativity, so you can dry hop with any type of hops you like, but make sure your hops are fresh and stored properly. Dry hopping is especially popular for IPAs and pale ales, and American ambers, but you can also experiment with other styles like pilsners, saisons, American brown ales, barleywines – or any beer style that you’d like. For traditionally hoppy beer styles, dry hopping improves a beer by adding more intense hop aromas and flavors, and let’s face it: no self-respecting hop-head is going to argue with that.
In this article, we will answer the most commonly asked questions brewers have regarding dry hopping.
- 10 Easy Steps for Dry Hopping Your Home Brewed Beer
- What is dry hopping?
- Why dry hop?
- Why is it called “dry hopping”, and why are hops dried in the first place?
- What are advantages to dry hopping?
- What are disadvantages to dry hopping?
- When and where to dry hop?
- What form of hops are used in dry hopping?
- What are the most commonly used hops for dry hopping?
- How long to leave the hops in when dry hopping?
- Can you dry hop already carbonated beer?
- How will dry hopping affect my final yield?
- What is hop creep?
- What is wet hopping?
10 Easy Steps for Dry Hopping Your Home Brewed Beer
Okay, so we’re going to cut the endless blather and get down to business. Everything is explained in greater detail after the list. By the way, there are indeed 10 steps for dry hopping beer, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Most lists are negligent and miss the last three steps.
Okay, so this goes without say, and while you can use any variety of hops for dry hopping, but some are more stylistically suitable than others. Don’t fall for the bullshit that “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” For a good general guide, see the table below: What are most commonly used hops for dry hopping?
The amount of hops you use for dry hopping depends on your personal preference and the style of beer you are making. A general rule of thumb is to use 0.5 to 2 ounces of hops per 5 gallons of beer. Hazy IPAs can use as much as 16 ounces per five gallons. Of course, you can adjust the quantity according to the hop intensity you want to achieve, which for IPA drinkers, can be huge. Always remember, among IPA fanatics, the following phrase has never been uttered: “Gee, this beer is too hoppy for me.”
There are different ways to add hops to the fermenter, such as using a hop bag, a hop tube, or simply tossing them in loose. Each method has its pros and cons, so you should consider factors such as ease of use, sanitation, hop utilization, and oxygen exposure when choosing your method.
4. Choose your timing.
The optimal time to add hops to the fermenter depends on the type of beer you are making and the hop character you want to impart. Generally, dry hopping is done after the primary fermentation is complete and the yeast has settled, but before bottling or kegging. This can range from a few days to a week, depending on the beer style and the hop variety. Hazy IPAs often use multiple dry hop additions, such as during active fermentation, at the end of fermentation, and before packaging.
Once you have chosen your hops, amount, method, and timing, it’s time to add them to the fermenter. Make sure everything is sanitized and avoid introducing oxygen to the beer as much as possible. If you are using a hop bag or a hop cylinder, you can weigh down the hops with sanitized marbles or stainless steel balls to keep them submerged. If you are tossing the hops in loose, you can gently swirl the fermenter to distribute the hops evenly and help them settle to the bottom.
Yeah, that’s right. You can’t wave the magic wand here and have the flavors magically leap into the beer, so you’re going to have to wait. After adding the hops, you need to wait for them to infuse their aroma and flavor into the beer. This can take anywhere from a few days to a week, depending on the beer style and the hop variety. You can monitor the progress by taking samples and tasting them periodically, but most brewers just wait the pre-decided period of time.
When you are satisfied with the hop character of your beer, you can remove the hops from the fermenter and proceed to package your beer as usual. If you are using a hop bag or a hop tube, you can simply pull them out and discard them. If you tossed the hops in loose, you may need to siphon your beer to another vessel to separate the hops from the beer. Make sure everything is sanitized and avoid introducing oxygen to the beer as much as possible.
If you don’t already have some cold beer in the refrigerator, then you are an epic fail! Stop reading now and walk away. You have disgraced yourself and your family name for generations. By now, you should know the unbreakable mantra in home brewing is that “Friends don’t let friends brew sober,” and even if you are brewing solo, you are undoubtedly your own best friend, so don’t violate the mantra.
Do we have to state the obvious? If you don’t pour it into a glass, then it will be pouring onto your feet, and that’s not going to do your taste buds any good. Although I suppose you could make the argument that the alcohol will kill your foot fungus, but let’s not go there.
Okay, so we’ve combined two steps into one here, but if we didn’t, then this would’ve been a bloated “11 Step” list, and then you’d think we were a bunch of idiots and we’d be severely downgraded by the search engine algorithms. So we’ve proven ourselves not idiots (this time), we’ve satisfied the search engine algorithm (all hail Google!), so what are you waiting for? Drink the beer and enjoy. You’re now an official dry-hopper, so go forth and preach the good news with your home brew in hand!
What is dry hopping?
Contrary to popular belief, dry hopping is not playing hopscotch in the desert. Dry hopping is a technique used by both professional and home brewers to enhance the flavor and aroma of their beers without adding bitterness. Dry hopping involves adding hops to the fermenter either during active fermentation, or after the primary fermentation is complete. The added hops usually soak in the beer for a few days before bottling or kegging. The hops added during this period will contribute their essential oils and aromatics, either through the alcohol’s solvent effects or through yeast biotransformation.
Why is it called “dry hopping”, and why are hops dried in the first place?
A common question is why we call this "dry hopping". Hops are small vine-grown cone-shaped flowers that only develop once a year. Unlike certain spices that lose much of their character when dried, such as basil, hops dry successfully and retain almost all of their characteristics. Also, dried hops, when properly stored in oxygen barrier bags and refrigerated or frozen, can retain their character for four years or more.
Freshly picked hops have approximately 80% moisture, so hops are dried after harvest to reduce their moisture content and prevent mold and mildew growth, which will spoil their quality and aroma. Drying hops also preserves their essential oils, which are responsible for their flavor and aroma.
Why Dry Hop?
Geez, this is like asking why get out of bed in the morning? Why bother putting on our clothes before going to work? To experienced brewers, this question falls under the same obvious questions like, “Why grill a steak?” The silly though obvious answer is if you want to eat a grilled steak, then you need to grill a steak. The characteristics of certain beer styles like American Pale ale and IPA are essentially defined by the process of dry hopping. If you don’t dry hop those beers, then you will not develop the flavors that you would expect. And we so want our home brewed IPAs to taste like IPAs.
Advantages to Dry Hopping
Dry hopping is a technique used in brewing beer to enhance hop aroma and flavor without contributing bitterness. Because dry hopping occurs after the boil, it allows brewers to take advantage of many different hop varieties to yield complex flavor profiles. Also, dry hopping can improve a beer’s perceived texture. Essential oils released by hops during the dry hop phase increase the suspension of protein particulates in the beer, which give the beer a fuller mouth feel. Finally, dry hopping preserves the hops’ essential oils, which otherwise would have been driven off with the steam during the boil. Yes, your kitchen would smell great, but you would’ve lost much of the hops’ flavor and aroma. And that’s sad.
Disdvantages to Dry Hopping
A big challenge of dry hopping dealing with all of the hops added to the beer. Professional breweries face this same difficulty. Home brewers commonly use narrow-necked carboys as fermenters, which can make siphoning the beer frustrating, due to the vast quantity of loose hops floating around. Siphoning with hops requires some skill, mainly in the form of manual dexterity, and like any skill, you will get better with practice. Gee, brewing and drinking more beer to gain skill? Yeah, sign me up.
A common worry among brewers dry hopping for the first time is the possible risk of bacterial contamination. After all, hops are not boiled and therefore not sterilized. However, hops are a poor habitat for the types of bacteria that could cause spoilage in beer. Moreover, if the hops are added to the primary fermenter after fermentation has begun, the yeast will dominate any bacteria on the hops. How so? By the time fermentation has begun, in a five gallon batch, the yeast cell count will number in the hundreds of billions compared to the hundreds of bacteria. Game over. Yeast wins. At this point the wort will be anaerobic, the yeast will have lowered the wort’s pH, and the yeast will have used most of the available nutrients. If the hops are added to the secondary fermenter, the alcohol and the beer’s reduced pH will deter bacterial growth. Consequently, bacterial infections from dry hopping are extremely unlikely. And if you need a sanity check, remember that professional breweries risk millions of dollars of beer by dry hopping, but they do not experience problems.
The final drawback of dry hopping is that some people may not like the resulting taste or smell, especially if the beer has been dry hopped for too long, which could result in a grassy character. On the other hand, if you enjoy any commercially produced IPAs or pale ales, then you definitely have experienced dry hopped beers, so if you’ve passed that test, then you will like the dry hop character in your homebrew too.
What are the most commonly used hops for dry hopping?
As a home brewer, you hold complete creative control, and control is power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and now you’re drunk with power, and you will uses whatever hops are on hand to dominate the world, and…oops, went off the rails there. But anyway, taste is personal, and while you can use whatever hops you want, most brewers find certain so called “finishing hops” to be better for certain styles. For example, hops like Amarillo, Cascade, Citra, Galaxy and Mosaic, among others, are common dry hops for IPAs, but not Cluster, Polaris and Target. Feel free to experiment and keep notes. Also, pay attention to the hops your favorite brewery uses, which will provide a good starting point. In the mean time, check out the table below for some good starting suggestions.
By the way, this table is not exaustive, and hop varieties evolve with time. Don't be afaid to experiment and try something new!
| Beer Style | Dry Hop Quantity Per 5 Gallons |
Dry Hop Duration | Dry Hop Varieties |
| American Amber Ale | None, or 1/2 - 2 Ounces | 3 - 4 Days | Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Simcoe, Willamette |
| American Blonde Ale | None - 1/2 Ounce | 3 - 4 Days | Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, Crystal, Willamette |
| American IPA | 2 - 8 Ounces | 3 - 4 Days |
Amarillo, Azacca, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Citra, Ekuanot, El Dorado, Galaxy, Idaho 7, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, Simcoe, Vic Secret, Zythos |
| American Pale Ale (APA) | 1 - 2 Ounces. Modern Examples May Go Heavier. | 3 - 4 Days | Amarillo, Azacca, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Citra, Ekuanot, El Dorado, Galaxy, Idaho 7, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, Simcoe, Vic Secret, Zythos |
| American Wheat Ale | None - 1/2 Ounce | 3 - 4 Days | Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Simcoe, Willamette |
| Belgian Belgian IPA | 2 - 4 Ounces | 3 - 7 Days |
Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, Citra, East Kent Goldings, Galaxy, Hallertau, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, Saaz, Simcoe, Sorachi Ace, Sterling, Styrian Goldings, Tettnang, Vic Secret, Willamette |
| Belgian Pale Ale | 1/2 - 2 Ounces | 3 - 7 Days |
Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Citra, East Kent Goldings, Fuggle, Galaxy, Hallertau, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, Saaz, Simcoe, Sterling, Styrian Goldings, Tettnang, Willamette |
| Cider | None - 2 Ounces | 3 - 4 Days | Amarillo, Azacca, Cascade, Centennial, Citra, El Dorado, Galaxy, Idaho 7, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin |
| Double IPA (DIPA) | 2 - 6 Ounces. Modern Examples May Go As High As 16 Ounces. | 3 - 4 Days | Amarillo, Azacca, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Citra, Ekuanot, El Dorado, Galaxy, Idaho 7, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, Simcoe, Vic Secret, Zythos |
| English IPA | 1/2 - 2 Ounces | 3 - 7 Days |
Challenger, East Kent Goldings, Fuggle, Northern Brewer / Northdown, Styrian Goldings |
| English Pale Ale / Bitter | None - 1 Ounce | 3 - 7 Days |
Challenger, East Kent Goldings, Fuggle, Northern Brewer / Northdown, Styrian Goldings |
| Hazy IPA / New England IPA | 8 - 16 Ounces | Half During Primary Fermentation. Half Post-Fermentation for 3 - 4 Days |
Amarillo, Azacca, Citra, Ekuanot, El Dorado, Galaxy, Idaho 7, Lotus, Mosaic, Motueka, Nelson Sauvin, Sabro, Simcoe, Vic Secret, Wai-iti |
| Session IPA | 2 - 6 Ounces | 3 - 4 Days | Amarillo, Azacca, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Citra, Ekuanot, El Dorado, Galaxy, Idaho 7, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, Simcoe, Vic Secret, Zythos |
When and Where to Dry Hop?
Now that you’ve chosen your dry hops, you need to decide when in the process to add them. In home brewing, the three most used vessels are the primary fermenter, the secondary fermenter, and the keg.
- Primary fermenter: Dry hopping in the primary fermenter is the easiest way to add hop aroma and flavor to most beer styles. You can add hops either during active fermentation or after primary fermentation without worrying about oxygen getting into the beer.
- Secondary fermenter: Historically in home brewing, dry hopping in a secondary fermenter was the traditional place. Today, however, there are differing opinions regarding the use of a secondary fermenter when dry hopping. One reason for using a secondary fermenter is that it can help to clarify the beer by allowing more time for sediment to settle out. However, siphoning the beer between fermenters will introduce unwanted oxygen to the beer, which can lead to stale or muddy hop flavors. Flushing the secondary fermenter with CO2 will help, but not everyone has access to a CO2 tank.
- Keg: Dry hopping in the keg is a great idea to infuse bright and saturated hop flavor. Add hops to a hop bag or stainless steel hop tube before transfering the beer into the keg. To avoid a clogged poppet valve, consider installing a floating dip tube in your keg to draw beer from the top.
How long to leave the hops in when dry hopping?
How long you dry hop your beer will vary depending on several factors, including the style of beer you're brewing, the specific hops you're using, and your personal taste. Here are some general guidelines:
- Aroma Intensity: If you want a more subtle hop aroma, such as in pale ales and some lagers, you can leave the dry hops in the beer for a shorter period, typically 3 to 5 days.
- Moderate Aroma: For a moderate hop aroma, a typical duration is around 5 to 7 days. This is often used for styles like IPAs and American amber ales.
- Intense Aroma: If you're looking for a bold and intense hop aroma, you can leave the dry hops in the beer for a longer, such as 7 to 10 days or even more. This is often done for styles like double IPAs (DIPAs) and New England IPAs (NEIPAs).
- Experimentation: Homebrewing allows for experimentation, so try different durations to find the sweet spot for your taste. You can also split your dry-hop additions into multiple stages, with some hops added during active fermentation and others added post fermentation to create a more complex aroma profile.
- Monitoring: If you are following an already established recipe, then simply follow the recipe. If you are experimenting with new hops or creating your own recipe, then consider monitoring your beer's aroma regularly. Start by tasting it after the initial dry-hop period and continue to taste it every day or two until you achieve the desired aroma. Once you reach the desired level of hop character, it's time to remove the hops.
- Cold Crash: After you've achieved the desired aroma, consider cold crashing your beer by lowering the temperature. This will help settle out the hop particles and make it easier to transfer the beer to bottles or kegs without excessive hop material.
What form of hops to use in dry hopping?
In modern brewing, this question boils down to (pun intended) pellet hops or loose leaf hops. And by asking this question, we’re wading into the deep stuff. It’s like saying Big Mack or Chicken McNuggets. Naturally, you will have the respective groups unyieldingly dig into their hard fought positions. It’s worth noting that in professional brewing, pellet hops are more commonly used than leaf hops. Due to the grinding and compression of the hop pellets, they tend to be a more stable product and less subject to oxidizing than whole hops. This is a big reason pellet hops are often used in commercial brewing and are more readily available on a homebrew scale. Whole hops, on the other hand, are easier to remove from the beer and, and if used fresh, may give a slightly brighter aroma than pellet hops, which lose some of the flower’s essential oils during the pelletization process. On the other hand, hop pellets store much longer than leaf hops, so if you use leaf hops, freshness is paramount.
Undoubtedly, hop pellets are the easiest type to pour through a carboy’s narrow neck. They also work well in bags, but make sure the bag’s mesh is fine enough to properly contain the pellet’s small particles.
Introducing hop pellets to a fermented beer can cause a sudden release of CO2 and thus foam, which can overtop your fermenter. This sudden CO2 release arises from the rapid disintegration of hop pellets upon contact with the beer, which creates nucleation sites for the CO2, thus driving the dissolved gas out of the beer. This is a good time to set that beer down, pay attention, and slowly add the hops to the beer.
It is important to note that pellet hops, when sufficiently soaked, will mostly submerge to the bottom of the fermenter, while loose hops tend to stubbornly float on the beer’s surface. In either case, careful racking can help separate the beer from the hops, provided you’re paying more attention to the siphon than the beer in your other hand.
How many hops to use while dry hopping?
Okay, so in the brave new realm of brewing hazy IPAs, it sometimes seems like the only answer to this question is to use as many hops as humanly possible. But for us mere mortals brewing classic styles of beer, keeping a grip on sanity and following some guidelines will pay dividends.
The amount of dry hops to use depends on the style of beer, the hop variety, and the personal preference of the brewer. However, for most non-over hopped IPAs, a general guideline is to use between 0.5 and 2 ounces of dry hops per 5 gallons of beer. Some factors that may affect the optimal amount of dry hops are:
- The freshness of the hops: Fresh hops have more volatile oils and aromatics than older hops, so they may require less quantity to achieve the desired effect.
- The duration and temperature of dry hopping: Longer and warmer dry hopping periods may extract more flavor and aroma from the hops, but also increase the risk of grassy or vegetal off-flavors. A common practice is to dry hop for 3 to 7 days at room temperature or slightly below.
- The type of fermenter: Conical fermenters may allow more contact between the beer and the hops than carboys or buckets, so less dry hops may be needed.
Ultimately, dry hopping is an art as much as a science, and if you are creating a new recipe, then experimentation is the best way to find the ideal amount for each brew. A good starting point is to use 1 ounce of dry hops per 5 gallons of beer, and adjust from there based on the results and feedback. And if your loser friends give you bad feedback, then them to keep drinking their hard seltzer from their wine glass.
To bag or not to bag?
This question sounds like that existential decision when your spouse throws you out of the house, you’re under the overpass, and you’re trying to decide whether to use a blanket or a sleeping bag.
And this is similar to another age old question: Great taste or less filling? What’s the answer? But for home brewers, our age old question is whether or not to bag your dry hops.
When you’re ready to transfer the beer from the fermenter, using a containment vessel can be useful. This could be in the form of a reusable fine mesh nylon bag or a stainless steel hop tube. Either way, the contained hops are easier to remove from the beer. Using a sanitized instrument, you scoop the bag or tube and remove it. Of course, this only works in an open-topped fermenter, such as a bucket or cylindroconical fermenter. Trying to bag hops in a narrow-necked is classically a losing venture. The hops expand with the beer, and short of you going medieval, your big bloated bag has taken up permanent residence in your carboy. Short answer? When using a carboy, just drop the hops in, and when you’re ready to siphon, siphon carefully.
If you decide to bag your hops, the bag to a certain extent will reduce to hops' exposure to the beer, especially if you’ve over-packed the bag. Some brewers will compensate by adding 10–15% more hops. Is this worth worrying about? If you’re dry hopping that hazy IPA with 10 ounces of hops, and your bag is not overstuffed, then probably not. Like everything in home brewing, experiment, keep notes, and adjust in future batches if necessary. Note how we said “future batches”? Here’s the idea: “Gee, my beer didn’t turn out 100% perfect. It was only 95% perfect. I guess I’ll just have to brew more beer and drink more beer. Boy, this sucks.”
Finally, when using bags, be sure to properly sanitize the bag. If the bag material is porous, we prefer to boil the bag instead of soaking it in sanitizers.
How will dry hopping affect my final yield?
Here again is another problem that professional breweries face. Perhaps dried hops are not hops at all, and maybe they’re actually desiccated sponges, because while they’re performing their magic imparting into our beer those wonderfully bright hop flavors and aromas, they will also be absorbing a significant amount of your beer, which for we home brewers is forever lost. How do professional breweries counter this? Many breweries use centrifuges to recapture the absorbed beer from their dry hops. We too can use this technique if we’re willing to spend one-hundred thousand dollars for a centrifuge and have it take over our living room. Trust me from personal experience, your spouse will not only appreciate this, but will actively endorse it. So what do we do as home brewers?
First, accept your losses. If you are brewing a five gallon batch of beer, in the case of ridiculously hopped hazy IPAs, you may only yield 3.5 gallons. Yeah, it sucks to lose 1.5 gallons of beer, but hey, now’s the time to be the glass half-full person: 3.5 gallons of hazy IPA is a hell of a lot better than zero gallons of hazy IPA. Or maybe I’ll just drink a White Claw and drive to work on my tricycle.
Second, we’re not naming names, but some brewers who keg their beer might be described as obsessive-compulsive. Yes really. And they wake at 3:00 AM in a cold sweat after a nightmare and stare at the ceiling, and dammit, they declare that “so-help-me-god, I will yield five gallons into that keg!” Their solution? Begin your batch at 6.5 gallons, accounting for the loss. Is this worth it? To the obsessed brewer – yes, but beer’s unit cost is unchanged, and hazy IPAs are expensive to brew, so if you have large enough equipment to handle 6.5 gallons, and if you’re willing to pay 30% more for your batch, then go for it obsessive-compulsive brewer. You’ll sleep better at night.
What is hop creep?
No, hop creep is not some sketchy hop wearing an overcoat and peeking through your bedroom window at night, so let’s quash that rumor right now. Hop creep is a curious phenomenon that occurs during dry hopping. In particular, after dry hopping, the beer continues fermenting after having reached final gravity. What is happening here? Hops contain amylolytic enzymes that break down unfermentable dextrins in beer into fermentable sugars, which, in the presence of the yeast, leads to a secondary fermentation. Hop creep can increase alcohol, diacetyl, and CO2, especially if it occurs after bottling or kegging.
Naturally, hop creep depends on numerous factors, such as hop variety, quantity of hops used, maturity, wort composition, yeast strain, cell concentration, dry-hop form, contact time and temperature. Should we stay away at night worrying about all of these factors? As home brewers – no. Typically, hop creep is not a big problem for home brewers. Hop creep will lower the final gravity slightly, so we just accept that, but to avoid the deleterious effects of hop creep, keep the following tips in mind: don’t bottle or keg too soon after dry hopping, and dry hop at yeast fermentation temperatures. At proper fermentation temperatures, the yeast will ferment any new sugars and will uptake any diacetyl developed in the process. Also, don’t cold crash the beer until you are sure all hop amylolytic enzyme activity is complete.
What is Wet Hopping?
In home brewing, wet hopping is similar to dry hopping, but unlike dry hopping, you are using hops picked fresh from the vine. Wet hops are typically added to the beer within 24 to 48 hours of harvesting, and because they are not dried, they contain about 80% water. Therefore, wet hopping requires more hops by weight than dry hopping, five times as much. In other words, if a recipe calls for 1 ounce of dry hops, you would use 5 ounces of wet hops, or if you’re some crazy-ass using 16 ounces of dry hops in your hazy IPA, you will need 80 ounces of wet hops! Woo-hoo!
Can you dry hop carbonated beer in a keg?
Before we answer that question, let’s answer this question first: can you shake a warm bottle of beer and then point it towards your face before opening? Yes, yes you can, but you should either wear a raincoat, or proceed with caution. The same can be said for dry hopping an already carbonated keg. Why? When you suddenly add hops to a carbonated beverage, you are essentially introducing a myriad of nucleation points that encourage the CO2 to violently blast out of solution. So what’s the solution? Keep the beer a cold as possible, place the hops in a hop tube, gently submerge the tube and seal the keg quickly. And maybe wear safely goggles and sneakers and be ready to run for the hills.
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far, then undoubtedly you are now a dry hopping convert. Remember, dry hopping can be as easy as tossing some hops into your fermenter. And like everything in home brewing, you can keep the process as simple or as complicated as you would like, which underscores an old expression in home brewing: “It’s not rocket science unless you want it to be.”
For brewing modern beer like American pale ales or IPAs, dry hopping is an essential process in brewing those styles, and let's face it - we love our hops. First time dry hoppers might go batshit-crazy and dry hop every liquid in sight, including every beer style known to mankind, water, orange juice, motor oil and their morning coffee, but in time most brewers calm down and recognize that many classic beer styles shine without dry hopping. But hey, dry hopping is one more tool in our home brewing tool kit, and learning a new tool is knowledge, and knowledge is power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and now I’m drunk with power and I’m with the goal of world domination I'm going to dry hop everything in sight, and…! Pause…whew. Okay, I’ve calmed down….Yes, calmer than you are.... But I’m still going to dry hop everything!
