IPAs seeming to take to long to mature

[Samwize419]

Hey guys, long time lurker, finally made an account,

I've noticed my IPAs don't hit their stride at all until about 3+ weeks in the keg, which is fine with me, but I've noticed there are a lot of people on here who like to drink their IPAs as fresh as possible. This makes me wonder if there's something wrong in my process that that's making my beers take so much longer to mature. I'll start tasting it about a week or so in once it's decently carbed up (burst levels for a day then set and forget) and I'm consistently disappointed. At this point it's drinkable but the taste is really muddled, nothing stands out and its almost apple juicy, a classic congrats on your first homebrew, if you will. After 2 weeks and fully carbed I'd liken it to getting a beer at a brewery and not being impressed, definitely not ordering another one, pretty underwhelming. Then at 3-3.5 weeks, damn! that's exactly what I was going for, nice, clean and delicious and the hops are distinctly highlighted!! So process: These days I'm brewing a lot with Kviek strains because that temp window is just so nice and easy to work/experiment with, plus I love the range of characteristics you can get from it. I usually underpitch to enhance said characteristics, but I'll do a starter if that's not desired. I also consistently heavily hop stand, usually let it ferment for 10-14 days, giving it at least 4 days after stable fg, then keg hop and let carb. Other than that I like brewing across pretty much the whole IPA spectrum, leaning more west coast but always heavily hopped. I have the same results wether it's a crowd pleaser or a funky experiment. Also I know the timing of this flavor dynamic kind of coincides with keg hopping instead of dry hopping, but it doesn't seem to be the whole story. It's not a case of a mediocre beer being covered by a massive amount of hops, this happens to my subtler recipes as well. Other styles I'm much more patient with. I've learned to be patient with my IPAs now as well, but it just seems like a lot of people preach the fresh as possible for their IPAs, so curious if there's some issue I can hone in on in my process. Or are the fresh as possible preachers' kegs just not making it to that final stage where it fully develops to show them the error of their ways?

 

[Staticsouls]

So what exactly is your process?
Do you use a fermentation temp controller, what is it? Do you raise Temps at the end of fermentation at all?

Are you only using kviek? Or do all your ipas get this strain?

Cheers

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I've noticed my IPAs don't hit their stride at all until about 3+ weeks in the keg, which is fine with me, but I've noticed there are a lot of people on here who like to drink their IPAs as fresh as possible.

My experience is not too much different than yours. For a typical APA or American IPA fermented with Chico, they are nice at about 2 weeks in the keg, but usually really nice around 3-5 weeks. Those beers are usually cold crashed around day 11 and kegged around day 13.

My hazy brewing experience has used a variety of recipes and yeasts, but they generally need about 2 weeks in the keg before some of the hop astringency settles out...though I feel like some people like that character, or at least associate it with what an NEIPA is supposed to taste like. With some of my earlier attempts, the haze and hop character started to fade/settle out after 3-4 weeks, but my last few have had more stable haze and flavors.

The couple beers I have made with Voss seem to clean up faster. Those have all been kegged at about 1 week and very drinkable after 1-2 weeks in the keg.