olaboss wrote:I wanted to know what to do with some wild Cascade hops that I picked a month ago? I love hoppiness in a beer and I think I will use them for dry-hopping. Can you (experienced brewers) see any risks with dry hopping if you don't know the IBU rating?
Any suggestions?

Don't worry about the IBUs when dry-hopping. Without boiling the hops, you will get no added bitterness.

Did you dry the hops? That makes a difference in the flavour. Fresh hops have a grassy, herbal taste. Not bad, just slightly different. It's also a good idea to put the hops in a hop bag weighted with a few marbles. I didn't do that last time, and my fresh hops floating on the surface went mouldy. The beer still came out tasting fine.

As an aside - I made an APA using wild hops that I had harvested from a hedgerow on my vacation property. To get a rough idea of their bitterness, I tried the taste titration method. Basically you brew a hop tea from the wild hops and a hop tea from the same weight of known %AA hops. Then you add measured amounts of sugar to each tea, continually tasting until the bitterness changes to sweetness. The ratio of sugar used in each tea times the %AA of the known hops gives a rough estimate of the unknown %AA. It requires rinsing between each taste, and my tongue was almost numb at the end. Based on the flavour, I'd guess those wild hops were Cascade, but they were much lower in bitterness than commercial Cascades. In the end that beer turned out true to style, so I think my bitterness guess was close enough.

olaboss wrote:So dry-hopping only add aroma?

That's what they claim. To me it seems to add flavour as well, but smell does have a big effect on taste.

I suspect that floating dry hops would be much less likely to go mouldy than fresh hops. However, since the idea is to liberate the aromatic oils by soaking the hops in the beer, sinking them under the surface allows all of the hops to soak.