Hop compound biotransformation: Dry hopping

[Kealia]

Taken from Draft/BYO:

In short, they tested dry hopping at different times to compare the results:

That trial involved testing the concept of biotransformation using the next two batches of the brewery’s beloved DIPA. The two versions were brewed using the same wort, same yeast, same fermentation and same conditioning profile. The only difference: when the hops were added. In DIPA v4, the blend of Citra, Amarillo, Simcoe and Mosaic hops was added during fermentation to enable biotransformation to occur; in v5, the hops were added after fermentation to illustrate standard dry-hop aroma.

Full article here.

[Dawg LB Steve]

Interesting!

[ScrewyBrewer]

"The beers’ flavors diverge as well. In v4, the hops come across as woody, almost mossy, with notes of overripe orange, mango notes, chopped onions, fresh grass blades and tangerine pulp injected throughout. More bright citrus shines in v5’s sip, with spikes of lime and garlic cloves. A finishing flash of mint seems messier than v4, and the bitterness is rougher, but its texture seems softer, with bitterness that doesn’t clear away quite as quickly."

I don't even know where to begin, if only my taste buds and vocabulary could be that refined. I think the odds of finding 2 people on Earth who would describe the same beers this way are astronomically, if not infinitesimally small.

[BlackDuck]

My thoughts too Screwy. But an interesting article nonetheless.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mashani]

It’s as stark a visual contrast as you’d get putting a bright West Coast-style IPA up against a turbid Northeast variety.

Except that plenty of west coast style IPAs involve massive amounts of hops being added as 'dry hops' too, so simply adding hops post primary fermentation is not the only reason this happened.

Unless by "post fermentation" they are talking about after they micro filtered and brite tanked and removed all traces of yeast, and then added the hops, and then force carbed it with no trace of yeast left.

But that's not something we typically do at our scale. I'm not familiar with a commercial micro brewer who does the filtering and brite tanking before adding dry hops. Maybe some do? I dunno. Seems to make the whole point of filtering dumb, unless you are explicitly going for this particular effect.

But if you don't do that, then there is still yeast and there is still bio-transformation going on in theory.

And then even if you did that, if you added bottling yeast and priming agent to get a true bottle conditioned beer, that yeast should start to work on the hop compounds in the bottle too.

And also whatever happens, results are going to be very much hop specific, so it might be nifty with some and awful with others.

And what about yeast strain differences? IE what Bella Saison does might be radically different then what WLP001 does.

So there is some potential level of apples vs. oranges. vs. pears vs. nutmeg going on here to really test and understand it. It's not as simple as just "dry hopping" or not.

[Kealia]

Hahaha, excellent summary Screwy. That's right up there with the 'candied orange peel' description on one of the Stone beers!

Excellent points mashani. Yeast strains came to mind for me when I read it, too.

[philm00x]

This is the technique I employed on my hoppy wheat beer. It has been cold crashed and gelatin fined recently. I'll post my findings when I taste the first bottle.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Kealia]

This is the technique I employed on my hoppy wheat beer. It has been cold crashed and gelatin fined recently. I'll post my findings when I taste the first bottle.

Interesting, how did the gelatin-fined wheat beer turn out?

[philm00x]

This is the technique I employed on my hoppy wheat beer. It has been cold crashed and gelatin fined recently. I'll post my findings when I taste the first bottle.

Interesting, how did the gelatin-fined wheat beer turn out?

To be determined. I'm bottling it tomorrow, although I drew a sample from the spigot before adding the gelatin and the cold crash settled a LOT of cloudy yeast and hop gunk to the bottom. The aroma was intensely citrusy! Potent but not harsh. My first impressions on this dry hop technique is that it does bring out a more amplified aroma than traditional dry hopping.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mashani]

My first impressions on this dry hop technique is that it does bring out a more amplified aroma than traditional dry hopping.

What's interesting to me about this (what you just did if I understand right), as well as what I get from my lid-on hop stands, is that one of the reasons folks liked the idea of dry hopping for aroma in the traditional way (pretty late on) is that most of the vigorous fermentation is over, so most CO2 has been blown out, so the theory was that the aroma would not get blown out with it.

But I get some solid aroma from the lid-on hop stands that doesn't simply end up in my air, so I've been pretty happy with that method.

[philm00x]

I do like to do hop stands with the lid on after flameout to help bump the aroma, as well. I just try to apply as many techniques as I can to intensify the hop aroma when I brew a style that calls for it.

But I see what you're getting at, and yeah it makes sense. When I brew at home, or even more so now at work, and the fermenters are going nuts I often smell the malt. I would think I would be smelling hops as well but I never did.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk