Do You Dry Hop (& are your results inconsistent?)

Dry Hopping.
You've heard about it but you know that its very difficult to achieve that magnificent aroma and taste consistently.
For the first time you can learn the secrets from a special guest speaker , Antoine Dubois from Belgium.

Search for the Hoppy Grail – Dry hopping (by Antoine Dubois)

Among the 4 ingredients of beer, hops is the one that captures quite a bit of attention. For those people interested in brewing beer, they couldn't have missed it. Whether it is consciously or not, or whether it is for marketing reasons or just for the love of it, the pursuit of Hoppiness seems to be everywhere. But what is it about hops that make it an endless subject of discussion?

Those who were lucky enough to smell fresh hop cones once in their life know it; hops smells incredibly good! It’s no wonder why. In history, the brewer selected that ”weed” to aromatize their beers. In addition to bringing bitterness that offsets the sweet malty flavours, it is also a very effective method to keeping the brew's microbiological integrity. Hops are like the missing link of beer, the ingredient that gives beer all its nobility and makes it what it is!

If you were introduced to brewing because of the new craft beer scene then it is very likely that you heard about dry hopping. The story says it was invented by Sir George Hodgson... about 200 years ago! Perhaps Hodgson only wanted his Pale Ale to survive its 4 months journey to India through wild seas and tropical sun. But he had it all good when he decided to add some hop flowers into the casks that were leaving his brewery located in London's area. This indeed helped protect his beer, but most of all, it improved its complexity giving it a intense fresh hop aroma and creating a new beer style known as IPA. Our dear George was probably far from picturing that his technique would be adopted and given another chance by the new generation of brewers in the 21st century.

The reasons for dry hopping might have changed nowadays. It is more about giving the 'stick your head in a bag of fresh hop' aroma to beer than increasing its stability. But this practise is still alive and dry hopping will survive as long as today’s new world brewers keep nurturing dry hopping to the delight of beer lovers.

But have you ever noticed how hard it is to predict the aroma of a finished beer when designing your recipe? How come it never quite smells as awesome as fresh hops? Well, this is all about understanding how to preserve the light volatile molecules of hop into the brew by using the right techniques designed for that purpose. Luckily, devoted craft brewers, history and science have come together to help us understand how to add complexity to our beers and make them taste incredibly hoppy.

So, perhaps you're asking yourself the same questions every brewer asked himself before attempting his first dry hopping. When should I dry-hop my beer? What hop variety should I use? What about conditioning? How long should I infuse my beer with it? At what temperature? How can I predict it’s effect on aroma or bitterness?

This year for the first time these questions will be revealed in Wellington by a special guest Antoine Dubois!
Antoine studied and graduated as a brewery engineer at the University of Louvain, Belgium. He has both strong practical and theoretical experiences in the field of brewing. He recently worked as a research assistant and main brewer for the brewery dept. (INBR) of UCL (only research dept. dedicated to beer in Belgium).

Join us and come to our brewing lessons in Wellington this August and we'll reveal the how and why of not only Dry Hopping but many other fascinating and revealing subjects on brewing. But best of all you’ll learn about brewing from the inside out and how you can implement the science and art in your brewing right at home.