[erockrph]

The guy in our club making the best IPA's says he dry hops with four ounces per gallon.

I dry hopped with 5oz/gallon once and I got so much vegetative matter in my bottles that it took a month of lagering to get them to drop out. By that point the hop oils were already starting to fade. I really think that the point of diminishing returns starts at about half an ounce per gallon and the curve starts to flatten out around 1 or 2 oz per gallon unless you have some sort of advanced rig like a torpedo.

[mabrungard]

The guy in our club making the best IPA's says he dry hops with four ounces per gallon.

That seems like a ridiculous amount of dry hopping.  I've been very pleased with around 2 oz in 5 gallons.  I couldn't imagine the mass of hop matter that would suck up much of my beer when 20 oz of dry hops were added to 5 gallons of beer.  My experience says that this is not workable or desirable.

[jeffy]

The guy in our club making the best IPA's says he dry hops with four ounces per gallon.

Holy crap !   I'm using 2oz/gallon now for AIPA. You know what though ? I usually think I needed more.  So you've tried the 4oz/gal IPA?  Sounds like it's damn good.  But as previously posted, I also have a hop problem.

He consistently makes the best IPA in our club.  I still have been too "frugal" to put that much in, but 3 ounces per 5 gallons doesn't seem to cut it for me.

[reverseapachemaster]

That seems like an enormous amount of dry hops. I wonder if some brewing salt adjustments could make those dry hops more pronounced without using such a massive amount.

[erockrph]

The guy in our club making the best IPA's says he dry hops with four ounces per gallon.

Holy crap !   I'm using 2oz/gallon now for AIPA. You know what though ? I usually think I needed more.  So you've tried the 4oz/gal IPA?  Sounds like it's damn good.  But as previously posted, I also have a hop problem.

He consistently makes the best IPA in our club.  I still have been too "frugal" to put that much in, but 3 ounces per 5 gallons doesn't seem to cut it for me.

I wonder what the rest of his process is? How long, what temp, bagged or loose, etc? I could see if you're dry-hopping cold, or for a short period of time, then there may be added benefit of a larger quantity of hops.

I'm actually testing out a large quantity/short dry-hop duration with an ESB I'm bottling tonight. 3.2 gallons in the fermenter got 5 ounces of dry hops. 2 ounces were leaf hops, so they went in for 2 days to give them extra time to hydrate. The other 3 ounces of pellets will be in for a total of 24 hours. (a half ounce of leaf hops ended up on the floor, but that's because I had to ferment in a carboy instead of a bucket  ) Normally I'd be using about 2 ounces of dry hops for this brew, so I'm curious how what the end result of this will be.