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Making Lemonade by Dry Hopping

SleepySamSlim

Grandmaster Brewer
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out of a Lemon Situation ...


OK - I learned another important lesson ... never brew when you have family visiting (unless they really are interested). Lets just say it was supposed to have been a Porter -- but after the "malt incident" and other confusions .... Lets just say I have 5gal of brown ale now in the secondary.  Its tastes like beer but undistinguished - plain - etc.  So I figure this my chance to do something different and make this more drinkable - so dry hopping comes to mind. But I've not done this before

I have a decent sized mesh bag I use for grains --- so would I need to give it a spray of StarSan and then put the hops in ? These would be whole leaf hops ... 

Comments on dry hopping welcome

Any other crazy sh*t I should try ?
 
May want some weight in the bag to keep hops down......marbles or such.  Sanitize with bag.

Got any oak cubes and bourbon? 

You could also cold-steep the omitted grains and dose the beer upon transferring. 
 
Good ideas ---  Dry hop will be done -- good idea with the marbles

Don't really want to do the oak on this as I think its too light  OG was 1.048


But maybe just a splash of something like bourbon --- would a dark rum work ?  Southern Comfort ?

What have some of you used in the past and how much do I dose 5gal with to get just a hint of a more complex taste ? Hint being the important thought here
 
I've read that it is easy to strip some harsh notes from darkly roasted grains and coffee, so one method is to steep them in cold water for just their flavor, and then add that to the wort or beer later in process.  Similar to putting roasted/chocolate on top of the mash so they are sparged only, not soaked and mashed.  Supposedly smoother flavor.
 
Thanks Maltlicker!, I'll have to try that out sometime, I wonder if that makes abit of a smoother malty note with lighter beers during the winter with heavier octoberfest type beers.(just to get a more malty flavor on the side
I tend to like to hide munich malt grains in alot of my homebrews, I bet that would be fun with recipes to do a good bit of hops then up the anti with more malt flavour. I'm definately going to try that out and experiment alittle more. I have a feeling a little goes along way for flavors though. (Just thinking, don't know yet)
 
You could make a hop tea on the stove.  Say boil a quarter ounce for an hour, another quarter for a half hour, cool and add to the brew.
Just a thought.
 
Well I never did dry hop this batch of botched porter. As I stated the beer tastes ok just sort of one dimensional ... sooo I did buy some toasted French Oak cubes - sanitized them via steaming - then soaked them in Makers Mark Bourbon for 36hrs. Then dumped that into the secondary. Its been about a week and I'll bottle in a few days and also dose the final mix with a cup or so of the same bourbon at bottling.

Have no idea what I'll get at the end - but I am just shooting for just a hint of oak/bourbon. I'll be calling this Bad Dog Brown Ale
 
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