The Lee Valley Brewing Club kindly received a Coopers IPA kit from the Home Brew Company (http://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/) on Saturday at the Expo in the 'Well.
I didn't do any additions when I brewed it, so it's just the kit with 1kg of DME. It's bubbling away nicely now and I want to dry hop in a week or so.
I've got Saaz, Challenger and Magnum in the fridge, about 50g of each. I haven't done this kit before so any advice appreciated.
I'd probably go with 25g Challenger.
Wait til the bulk of fermentation is done, the bubbler to calm and the krausen to start to die back.
Pop the hops into a muslin bag (or a length of tights) with a few sterilised marbles to weigh it down.
Open the FV, throw them in, seal, leave for a week.
Simples!
Most folks will say that you have to wait until the fermentation is mostly completed or you'll lose a lot of the aroma through gas scrubbing, but I've never noticed much f a difference after throwing the hops in on day 1 or day 5. The Coopers' support team suggest that gas scrubbing is not a problem until you step up to brewing hectoliters at a time.
With pellets, I've been known to (regularly) throw the hops in loose. Pellets will break up and sink to the trub, cones will float and eventually sink (blocking the tap at times) but both ways do the job and if anything does make it to the bottle it will most likely become part of the sediment.
What I'm really trying to say is, just do it.
Make it simple, make it clean, make it convenient.
It will make your beer better even if you mess it up (provided you're clean about it)
In the end, I dry hopped with 30g of challenger and 15g of Magnum. I used pellets in a muslin bag weighed down with a brass nut.
I tried one last night. This beer has balls! The kit is quite hoppy before dry hopping (just from tasting some of the gravity samples) but it's fantastic after dry hopping. No wonder Craigtube lets out a "phhhooooooouurr" after tasting it!
The head is like a meringue. I must remember to use a glass without a shot-blasted base next time. I batch primed it to 2.7vols, maybe that's too much? I don't care, I like it :)
I look forward to it ;D