What went wrong? whole cone hops

[joe_r_harvie]

Hi, I've brewed and tasted my hop harvest IPA. I used all my own hops and it is not at all what I expected. I have made similar recipes using pellets and have had radically different aroma profiles. I dry hopped the secondary with 80 grams (5 gallon batch) of dried cascades. The aroma is faint and other batches I've made with the same dry hop with pellets have had that strong citrus, floral nose you'd expect from cascade. This batch is bland in aroma (light floral/fruity apricot) and am wondering what happened. My hops appeared ready and had lots of yellow lupilin. I picked and dried them September 2nd. Any suggestions? Low alpha or beta acid crop maybe?? Recipe is below.

Hop Harvest IPA
September 6, 2015
Kegged: September 28, 2015

32 L water treated with 6 tsp gypsum and half tsp salt

Grain Bill
4.5 kg 2-row
0.34 kg Carastan
0.23 kg Carapils
0.11 Flaked Barley

Mash in 32 L at 150° 2 hours

Kettle (all my own hops)
20 grams Chinook at boil
10 grams Chinook, 20 grams Cascade at 20 minutes
10 grams Fuggles, 10 grams Willamette, 2 grams Northern Brewer at 45 minutes
1 irish moss tablet at 45 minutes
Knockout at 60 minutes

Collected 18L
OG: 1.050
Pitched with Ringwood

Dry hopped with 80 grams Cascade whole leaf hops

TG : 1.007
5.5%ABV

[wortly]

You need to grind up the hops before you use them as dry hops or super late additions. Commercially available hops are either baled (whole leaf) or baled and pelletized. Both of these post-harvest processes shear the lupulin glands and allow the oil to be extracted by the heat or alcohol when added to beer. The alcohol level in beer isn't enough to rupture the glands, so if you dry hop without grinding unprocessed hops, then you won't get any aroma.

[joe_r_harvie]

thanks very much. I did not know this. Will do next batch.