Dry Hopping: German Hefeweizen (Blueberry Banana)

Today's the day for dry hopping! For those that don't know what dry hopping is, it's a method of adding more aroma to your beer. To dry hop, all you do is put some hops into your carboy after fermentation is nearing completion. You leave the hops in for about seven to ten days. Because the hops are being added after fermentation and boil, they contribute significantly to the aroma of the beer, but not so much to the bitterness.

If you recall, when I posted about the Blueberry Banana German Hefeweizen that I'm doing, I witheld about 6 ounces of cereal. The reason for doing so was that I wanted to dry hop the blueberry cereal to give the beer a nice blueberry smell.

Let's go! First, it's time to unpack the cereal. I had it in the fridge in a nice clean bowl with Saran wrap on top.

Next, I grab my sanitizer and a grain bag.

It's time to sanitize the grain bag to get rid of any bacteria. Although the beer is alcoholic at this point, and should kill off most bacteria, there's no point in risking contamination of the beer.

Here's a quick snap of the German Hefeweizen in action. It's been bubbling away, and the krausen hasn't gone down as quickly as the Ameran Hefeweizen (that you can see in the corner).

I've taken the airlock off of the carboy, and put it into the sanitizing solution to keep it clean.

I'm doing my dry hopping in my primary fermenter. Typically, dry hopping is done in a secondary fermenter. As soon as I go to put the cereal in, I see why. It's hard to fit six ounces of cereal through the little opening in the carboy.

I end up draping the bag into the carboy, and pouring the cereal handful by handful into the bag. Periodically, I shake the bag to allow the cereal to drop down into the lower half of the bag, that's actually inside the carboy.

All done. The beer was a bit more exposed to air than I would have liked, but it's the best that I could do. I have to admit, with the blueberry steeping in the beer, I'm getting very strong blueberry banana aromas just by being in the same room as the open carboy. It actually smells really good.

Now it's time to cap it back up. I leave the string from the grain back draped over the side of the carboy, and force the plug into the carboy so that no air can escape. The airlock immediately beings to hum away. I swirl the carboy for about thirty seconds to kick up some of the yeast, and allow the cereal to get nice and soaked.

That's it! The beer will soak with the cereal in it until next weekend (about 9 days), at which point I'll bottle it up. Stay tuned for my next post, where I buy an ice chest for my keg.