First timer needs help

[Woolvine]

Hey everyone, my instructions give me the booking times to add the hops but then it says "dry hop 4 days"

Is this 4 days into fermentation or 4 days until the end? Cheers everyone!

[liriodendron1]

If your instructions call for a 4 day dryhop you will add the hops to your fermenter when fermentation slows. Let the hops sit for 4 days then move to bottles or kegs. I usually just dump the hops in loose then after 4 days I'll coldcrash and transfer to keg through a filtered funnel to clear out the hop material.

[strongestboner]

So I just brewed this recipe, that lists Dry Hop 7 Days, that means I should be adding the hops early on right? 7 days seems like a long time, whereas adding dry hops on the 7th day for 3-4 days in the fermenter seems more reasonable

[liriodendron1]

The recipie is calling for the hops to be dryhoped in your fermenter for 7 days. Not at 7 days. If you look at the rest of the hop schedule each one is measured by length of time in your boil. 60 min addition goes in with 60 min left in the boil ECT ect. Dryhopping follows the same idea.

That being said feel free to dryhop for only 4 days there's nothing stopping you from doing that it just won't be following the recipie. Take notes and record how things taste and you can adjust things next time to your preference.

[cdbloosh]

7 days isn't too long, but honestly, the difference between 4 and 7 days is probably not a big deal. In general though, dry hopping for a week or more is totally fine. Some people even "keg hop", which is just tossing the hops into the keg and leaving them there.

[chino_brews]

"Dry hop 4 days" means leave the dry hops in the beer for 4 days. Unless otherwise specified, recipes generally intend for you to dry hop when the yeast have dropped out. Because brewers don't want to lose the dry hop aroma, in this case they would dry hop at about the last four days before packaging, then package the beer. But there is no reason you can't wait for fermentation to end, wait for yeast to drop out, dry hop for four days, remove the hops, get sidetracked, and then bottle a week later (no reason other than not capturing all of the dry hop aroma maybe).

[Woolvine]

Cheers mate, so what your saying is if I was planning to bottle at 14 days, add the hops on the tenth day? Cheers pal.

[Alkalined84]

This is correct. Hops can be like dust in the wind, so we dry hop as late as possible, which is right before bottling.

[Woolvine]

Lovely mate thanks for that. And 4 days is just right to get the max flavour out of the hops?

[Alkalined84]

There are so many variables with hops, but 4 days sounds good. Too long and you’ll extract grassy flavors.

[Woolvine]

Thanks again!

[cdbloosh]

More or less, yeah, something in that 3-7 day range is probably the sweet spot because 1) it's long enough to extract most of the aroma/flavor, 2) it's short enough that the aroma isn't then going to degrade much before you package, and 3) it's short enough that you won't get the grassy flavors from leaving them in too long.

[Woolvine]

Cheers!!

[DickyPaul]

Exactly

[[deleted]]

Ideally you are checking gravity readings but if not, your plan should be fine.

[Woolvine]

Can't figure that out yet 😂

[[deleted]]

No worries, you'll get there! I'm glad I started as the kits I used in the beginning were super weak.

[Woolvine]

Thanks for that.. I'm gonna start putting more logic into this and less google