Dry hopping advice

[Bedders1802]

I am doing my second brew soon which i hope will be a hoppy and tasty pale ale but welcome advice which will guide me in the right direction. I will be using the following ingredients

4kg maris otter pale
1.2kg pale liquid malt
250g crystal malt
200g torrified wheat
Citra hops 20g for 60 mins 10g for 15 mins and 10g flameout
Mosaic hops exactly the same as citra hops usage.

Mash at 66 C for 60 minutes but when is it best to add liquid malt and also I would like to dry hop but what usage would people recommend (ie hops, grams,timing).

Many thanks
Bedders

[Top Cat]

Hi Bedders.
Add your malt extract at the start or during the early part of the boil, the strength of the wort has an influence on the hop performance.
Regarding dry hopping, it depends how hoppy you want your beer, and experimenting to get it right for you is really the only answer.
Your hop schedule isn’t massive so to achieve for example an Oakham Ales citra type ale, I would suggest between 50/100grams of citra pellets.
Whatever you decide to use, I find the best time to dry hop is as fermentation is finishing, ie 4th or 5th day, and leave another 5 days or so, after that, if you can crash cool it helps to get the hops to the bottom of the bin.
You can place your hops in a bag and weight it down, I just sprinkle on the top and give them room to work.
Other posters may contribute to dry hopping in a bag, I prefer late hopping in the boiler as the hops act as a filter and I only have one mess to clear.
Hope this is helpful, and I’m sure you’ll get more advice!

[Cardassian]

Hi,

I find both citra and mosaic to be fine hops for dry hopping. So I would chose whichever I didn't want to save for a future brew/ whichever was cheaper and go with that.
Also I always work on the 5/10/15 rule for hippy American style pales. 5g/l for a pale, 10g/l for ipa and 15g/l for dipa. Seems to be at least a good starting point to work from.
Hope this helps.

[orlando]

You could start by reading this.

[Kingfisher4]

Hi Bedders,
Slightly off question but I’m guessing the reason you are using a mix of crushed MO and extract (rather than whole grain) is volume in your mash vessel? If not, I’d use all crushed MO.

[Bedders1802]

Yes I had a bad first brew experience. My hop bag dropped into the mash tun/boiler (I have a peco boiler/tun) using approximately 5.5kg of grain and was a nightmare. It was the last 1/4 to 1/2 kg when it dropped so I am going to try 4kg grain and top up with liquid malt at the moment until I get a better system

[Bedders1802]

Ps my vessel is 30ltr