Dry Hopping to give flavour to home brew extracts 1

Dry Hopping 1

I was getting a bit bored with my home brewing so decided to see if Dry hopping may improve the drink. 

I'm still using the Coopers Extract but it’s a bit dull. 

I started brewing about 2020 or possibly 2019 so at it for at least 5 years and onto batch 95 t present.  

I reviewed my costs and found that I was paying, initially about 1/4 the price for supermarket beer. 

48c instead of $2 for 330ml bottle based on Heiniken Lager 24 bottle purchase.  This was from a few years back, maybe round 2021. 

Each batch being 23 litres. 

I redid my figures last month and  its about $0.70 per bottle compared with $2.33 per can of IPA (on sale) so about 1/3 of cost. 

Thinks have got more expensive but it is still value for money to home brew, so I thought I'd try and improve the drink ability of the brews, and also look for better Extracts with more flavours. 

I've also started buying IPA's instead of general lagers, so want more flavour in purchased beer as well as brewed beer.  To that end adding hops to the brew can add to the flavour. 

The strategy is to dry hop after the fermentation is over, then add hops to give the beer a bit of a bite.  

Hopping- First try. 

Dry Hopping 1. Coopers Stout & Green Bullet Hops 100g ($7.50) . 

As  I'd not done any dry hopping before I decided just to put the hops in at the end of the fermentation. 

I decided to put 100g straight into the fermenter, and watch it. It was in there for about 4-5 days and when I got it out to rack there was a lot of sediment so I didn't get the 72 bottles of beer , about 5 less so  67 330ml bottles. 

I have them bottled and carbonating and it is about 10 days now so I will put one in the fridge to try tonight. 

 Dry Hopping 2. Coopers Australian Pale Ale (APA) & ? Hops 100g ($7.50) . 

As the sedimentation cased a loss I got a strainer off  AliExpress ($9.76) for putting the hops into and some marbles from the warehouse for weighting the vessel down in the brew. ($2.50)


 

 

I'd got 3 100g hop pellet packs, Green Bullet, Moutere & Waimea. 

The Green Bullet could be used with the Stout, so that was lucky.

I have decided to try the Moutere, the reason being its vacuum seal seems to have leaked so best to use it now, plus I'm clueless about which one is better, so its trial and error at this time. 

I'll put in the100g pack in and submerse the container and leave it for about 4-7 days. 

Actually I still have about 7 days with current APA  if I was drinking 4 a night. This brew is really giving  me dry horrors  . 

I'll leave it a couple of days before I drop them in. So I know I wont leave them in too long. 

 Sugar in the Brews 

I've  been putting 1.2kg of normal sugar in the brew and it does not really give me the flavour of the beer. I replaced the dextrose (1kg) for Sugar (1.2kg) and for some of the reading I've done there is a possibility that the yeast is all used up with the sugar and not working on the beer extract. 

So I'm going to go back to Dextrose and try again with that, and also use finings to make the beer clearer. 

Ordering different Brew Extract kits 

 I've also ordered some new Beer Extract kits, more expensive than whats at the supermarkets, but more variety and online. 

Unfortunately the BrewHouse buggered up my order and I haven't heard from them , to date, after I highlighted the issue.   Hopefully it will be sorted. 

So I have an XPA & a Yorkshire Bitter & ended with a bock instead of a Miners Stout. 

Other gadgets 

On AliExpress I got another  Hygrometer and am ordering a small tea infuser for doing small batches of dry hoppping. Also a couple more air seals for brewing. There seems to be some cheap brewing stuff on AliE & Timu, so I'll keep my eyes out for that stuff. 

I'll still go to https://arthurholmes.co.nz/ to get bottle tops as they are cheaper there than from China. 

I need to find a good on-line store that is not too expensive for Extracts. So will persevere.  

 I got the hops from, https://allthingsfermented.nz/collections/hops which is up the Kapiti coast and have seen some cheaper, so will try other suppliers as its early days for dry hopping. 

End Comment 

At this point I'm 10 days into another APA brew  and I need to drink a few more beers to get it so I can do the dry hopping, so I'll hold off on that for the moment. 

Then I'll try the XPA and see how that tastes

Also I'll put the Hops I have in the fridge, that is what is suggested.

 


 

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