Can You Dry Hop with Pellets?

So, you invested in hop pellets, or you’re thinking about making the investment, and now you’re wondering if you can dry hop with pellets. The short answer is yes. You can dry hop with pellets. The long answer is “not so fast! There are a few things to cover first.” Let’s get into it.

What Are Hops?

First, why are we using hops at all? Originally, beer was a simple beverage of fermented grain water. Brewers would toast whatever local grains they had to make them nice and sweet, bringing all those fermentable sugars to the surface. They would crack the grains open to expose those sugars. Then, they would boil the grain, strain it out, and let the grain water sit.

Cooled down, the grain water, now called wort, would attract local yeast, which would consume the sugars in the water and convert them to alcohol and carbon dioxide, making for a nice, sweet, fizzy, alcoholic grain brew.

Beer.

But over time, beer lovers wanted to cut into the sweetness with a little bit of bitterness, so they gathered local herbs like yarrow and chamomile, juniper berries and aniseed. The herb mixture was called gruit and was dropped into beer, usually after fermentation, to drive up bitterness.

Then, around 822 AD, a French monk wrote down instructions for making beer and included the collection of local hops. From that point on, brewer by brewer began using hops in beer until the herb was finally adopted universally as the bittering agent.

Hops are a flower that grows on a vine in a conical shape and also has preservative qualities, so beer with hops would last longer than other beers. An added bonus.

What Is Dry Hopping?

Dry hopping is the practice of adding the hops after fermentation has completed, certainly after boiling. When you boil any herb, the flavor becomes even more bitter and stronger, which in some cases will overpower the other characteristics of the beer. Boiling the herb also detracts from the light floral and herbal notes in the hops.

As a result, many brewers prefer to dry hop, sometimes all the way into secondary fermentation, to bring out the light flavors and aromas in the hops that will accentuate the beer flavor while also adding a level of bitterness to the sweetness.

What Are Pellets?

Historically, brewers have added the entire hop flower to the brew, making it easy to manage and easy to remove when hopping is complete. The flower comes away easily and not typically fall apart.

To make it easier to work with hops, to transport them, and to store them, many hop manufacturers have taken to pressing the hops into pellets.

There is no real difference in flavor, aroma, or quality between the whole hop flower, also called raw hops, and hop pellets.

Can You Dry Hop with Pellets?

Because there is no notable difference in quality, you absolutely can dry hop with pellets. The only problem arises when the pellets fall apart, as they are wont to do. When the pellets are pressed from flowers, they essentially become compressed bits and pieces of the flowers. When added to liquid, those pressed pieces tend to fall apart and can even make a sludge out of your brew.

No one wants that.

How to Dry Hop with Pellets

To avoid this headache, you can simply place your pellets in a strainer bag, like cheesecloth, and then place the entire bag into your brew during secondary fermentation. Then, after a few days, you can remove the bag from the brew, with all of your pellets fully intact in the bag still. You get all the flavor, aroma, and bitterness and none of the mess.

Ultimately, yes, you can dry hop with pellets. It will take a little extra time and energy, plus a bag, but it can be done, and it can be done well.

Cheers!

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Sources:

1. https://www.northernbrewer.com/blogs/beer-recipes-ingredients/whole-vs-pellet-hops
2. https://www.northernbrewer.com/blogs/brewing-techniques/dry-hopping

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