Cask hopping quantities

[BackO'Th'Shed]

Having emptied my wooden pin of Old Peculier over Christmas (which is highly recommended btw), I was curious to weigh the hops that I emptied out of there whilst cleaning the cask. I was quite surprised to find that there was 1.5 oz of hops in the 4.5 gal pin. This was quite a bit more than I was expecting - the beer was balanced with not a great deal of hop character. Is this normal for cask hopping?

I am planning to refill the cask with a best bitter and will throw in some fuggles, but this has got me thinking about how much to throw in there. Would 1.5 oz be too much for a best bitter?

I'll be brewing an OP clone for the cask later in the year and will use the same amount of hops to see how close I can get to replicating the beer that was in there.

[simon12]

That is quite alot for a pin especially for a non hop forward beer (about right for a beer with a huge hop flavour/aroma), was it definitely 1.5oz dry weight?

[Kyle_T]

Depends on what beer you are making really, I have done anything from 0.5oz for a mild to 3.5oz for a IPA in a cask.

[BackO'Th'Shed]

Good point about it being dry weight. I weighed whilst still wet out of the cask and then again after leaving to dry out for a few days and didn't notice much difference. I presumed it was due to the hops not absorbing much liquid. The number of cones didn't look too far off for what I would expect for 1.5oz though. Think I'll go with around 1oz in the bitter and experiment from there.

As with most things in this hobby, I've convinced myself that I 'need' another cask now so that I can have one conditioning whilst serving from the other...