American beer brewers and beer drinkers alike have been head over heels for hopped-up brews for years now and show no sign of shifting allegiances any time soon. The more hops the better! Dry-hopping is one more way to cram every last bit of hoppiness into a bottle, though for a different reason than you might think.
As an ingredient, hops flowers can be surprisingly finicky. They need to be boiled in the wort (what eventually becomes the beer) in order to extract the resins needed for bitterness. But at the same time, boiling destroys the delicate oils that give nuanced hop flavors and aromas to the beer. Even if the hops are added at the very end of the boiling, significant flavor and aroma compounds are lost.
One solution is dry-hopping. For this, hops are added to the beer when it’s nearly finished fermenting, just before it’s bottled. Because the beer doesn’t get boiled again at this stage, all the oils remain intact. The beer picks up a fresh hop aroma without any further bitterness.
And since aroma is such a huge part of how we perceive flavor, these aromatic dry-hopped beers usually wind up with a much more intricate and complex flavor profile than other highly-hopped beers.
Dry-hopping has been in practice for quite some time, but it’s only been recently that breweries have recognized it’s specific appeal to beer drinkers and are advertising the fact.
Keep an eye out for these dry-hopped beers and give them a try!
• Dry-Hopped Pale Ale from Founders Brewing Company
• Stone IPA from Stone Brewing Company
• Torpedo Extra IPA from Sierra Nevada Brewing Company
• 90 Minute IPA from Dogfishhead Craft Brewery
What do you think of dry-hopped beers? Any others to recommend?
Related: Quick and Dirty Guide to American Beer Styles
(Image: Flickr member Duncan licensed under Creative Commons)
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I highly recommend unEarthly Imperial IPA from Southern Tier. It can only be described as the nectar of the Gods. Other examples of dry-hopped beers would be Bell's Hopslam and an unique dry-hopped beer is Flying Dog's Raging Bitch.
Many of your Imperial IPAs are dry-hopped. Another way to get hop flavor into the beer is to use a hop back, a technique not easily replicated for home brewers.
Dry hopping gives off the citrusy, lemony or piney flavors of the hops, not the bitterness that you get from hops added for the length of the wort boil. Dry hopping makes beer delicious. I'm a total hop-head.
Hazed and Infused by Boulder Brewing Co. is one of my favorite dry-hopped APAs. It was the first beer that really introduced me to the depth of flavor hops could provide to a beer. I like the floral and citrusy qualities dry-hopping brings to beers. A great dry-hopped IPA I enjoy is Hopworks Urban Brewery's IPA, with its combination of Northwestern hop goodness.
Count me as another hop head.
Victory HopDevil...straight outta Downingtown, PA!
we grew hops and had our first harvest this fall - nearly 1 pound from one vine! we brewed two batches of beer so far and dry-hopped both with fresh, whole cones.
I love the smell of hops and lately I've been wondering why you don't ever see the scent used in perfumes.
Dry hopping is great because it gives you that amazing aroma but not the bitterness on the palate. New Glarus Crack'd Wheat, for example, is a great beer because it's dry hopped with Amarillo. It's got all those great hefe flavors (clove and fruit) with the piney/floral bitterness of the hops riding on top (in the nose) but not disrupting the flavors.