Dry hopping with first year hops

[ShartAttack]

Hi all,

This year I tried growing some hops on the balcony of my apartment. The one that really took off was Columbus, and I have maybe 3-4 oz of dried hops from that plant. They smelled good but as always you can't really know the quality of homegrown without testing and I've also heard that first year hops aren't as strong.

I brewed a BB Imperial Pale Ale kit last night. When primary is done, I was going to dry hop it with some/all of the hops in my freezer. Anybody have a guideline on how much I should use? I guess I'm more worried that if I throw them all in the secondary that it'll be undrinkable if they are stronger than I suspected but I'm kind of a dry hop newb in general.

 

[day_trippr]

If you have 4 actual ounces, you could use one ounce for the first try and consider the result a benchmark for the future.

An ounce is unlikely to be overpowering but should still provide enough character to get a good sense of the possibilities going forward with the rest of this year's harvest. Adjust usage as desired for subsequent batches, and next season you'll have solid footing.

Alternatively, if you really wanted to go all-in, split the batch, dry hop one half with an ounce and the other with two or the remainder...

Cheers!

 

[ShartAttack]

Thanks - that sounds pretty reasonable. I had it in my head to use them all at once, but it's probably better to take it easy and maybe even get a couple beers out of it.