The Sorachi Ace Wheat beer is out of primary and now it is time to dry hop with the remaining hop pellets that I have left over from brew day. I stored the opened hops packet in a zip lock bag in the freezer. In terms of freshness, it is not the freshest hops I could use but it’s what I had.
I have dry hopped before, but I used my own homegrown hop cones. They were easy to put in the carboy but not so easy to remove once the beer was done picking up all the flavor and aroma.
This time around, I was looking forward to working with pellets. Once I cleaned and sanitized my secondary, I put the pellets into the carboy and then racked the beer on top of them. The pellets broke apart slowly as the beer was siphoned off the yeast cake.
Right now, the hop particles are mostly floating at the top of the carboy. Some are settling to the bottom, and I wonder if more of it, if not all, will end up down there. I don’t think I will have the beer in the carboy long enough to find out.
I learned from reading stuff online and in the For the Love of Hops book that dry hopping does not have to be a long time. Three to seven days appears to the range. I plan to dry hop for four days and then bottle.
Since this is an American wheat ale, the hop aroma is not that important to the style. I am not using a large amount of hops, just a quarter of an ounce of the Sorachi Ace hops. I wanted to get a better understanding of this variety and I thought using the hops in all stages of hopping would be a good way to learn the process.
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