Minimizing oxidation by adding small amount of sugar with dry hops?

[Taket_al_Tauro]

Hello dear community,

This is my first post/thread. First of all, a huge THANK YOU !!!
I owe 99% of my homebrewing knowledge so-far to you, ladies and gentlemen (to you and
your colleagues from the equally outstanding German Hobbybrauer Forum). The amount of
knowledge you are able to share in these pages, and so easily make accessible to both newbies and advanced (home)brewers, is just mindblowing...

So let's come to my actual question/issue:
I have an IPA fermented with WY 1450 that is sitting right now and waiting to be dry hopped. I truly love this yeast, the only drawback being that it takes hell of a long time to settle if you cannot cold crash (which I am not able to do at the moment). Once I bottled a beer "only" after 3 and a half weeks, as a result I had too much yeast sediment in the bottles. So I will typically wait 5-6 weeks from pitching to bottling with this yeast. I will dry-hop in the primary fermenter around the 5-week mark, thats about 3 weeks since the end of fermentation.

I've been happy with my last couple IPAs, yet recently I became also aware that oxidation post-fermentation can be a real issue, especially with hop-forward beers. Along these lines, I read that introducing dry hops at this point may bear some oxidation risk.

If I add a small amount of sugar together with the dry hops (say, about 1 oz for a 7 gal batch),
will that help in re-activating the still-suspended yeast a bit, so that it will consume most of
the oxygen added with the dry hops (I use pellets by the way)?

Here my concrete plan:
- Boil a little bit of water together with the 1 oz of sugar, to sanitize as well as degass it.
- let it cool, then add the dry hop pellets to this water
- Add this slurry to the fermenter, dry hop 5 days, then bottle.

... or would re-activating the yeast just cause part of the yeast cake to rise back
into suspension, doing more harm than good in such a case?

I stubled upon this idea by reading some other threads. One of these was discussing almost my very same situation, yet I did not find conclusive answers in it...that's why I decided it was time to write my first post here .

FIY, I currently don't have a kegging setup either. I am aware that this would be the best way
to fight oxidation... For the moment, I am just trying to think about ways to minimize the impact of oxidation from the standpoint of my very basic setup. I even bought a bottle of wine-preserving spray for this last batch, to experiment a bit with purging the bottling bucket + bottles/headspace...

Thank you in advance for your thoughts!

 

[Miraculix]

First, I would switch the yeast and try a higher flocculant one. I am not familiar with the one you mentioned, what characteristics do you particularly like about this strain? Maybe there is some more flocculant strain available with similar characteristics.

The sugar would bring the yeast back into suspension, I am afraid. But thousands of gallons have been brewed without the extra sugar addition, I guess you will be fine as well.

 

[Taket_al_Tauro]

Thanks for your reply. If it brings part of the yeast back into suspension, I'll definitely not do it...
What I like about this yeast is its signature full, soft and silky mouthfeel. I did not try a huge number of yeasts yet, but from what I read this one (1450 Denny's favorite) is quite unique in that respect.
My experience and a comparison with the standard Chico strain definitily confirm this.

 

[str1p3s]

If you are bottling anyway, wouldn't adding priming sugar at bottling time accomplish the same thing?

 

[kh54s10]

If you are bottling anyway, wouldn't adding priming sugar at bottling time accomplish the same thing?

The OP is worried about oxidation caused by adding the dry hops. By the time it is bottled any oxidation caused by the dry hop addition would already be done.

I don't think the oxidation from dry hopping is much to worry about. Most of the off flavors will take a while to get going and your IPA should be drunk young.

I have used Denny's Favorite a couple of times. I used it in darker beers so I wouldn't see as much but my beers were pretty clear by 3 weeks in primary.

The only times I have gone 6 weeks is by procrastination, not waiting for the beer to clear up. Though I have made a few that never cleared.

 

[Taket_al_Tauro]

OK thank you! I guess I am overthinking the whole oxidation thing a bit...
With Denny's I did 3 beers so-far. This one right now would be the fourth. With two of these I waited 6 weeks and I was very pleased, clear beer and little sediment in the bottles. The last one I waited only 3 and a half weeks. The beer was also pretty clear by the time I started drinking it, but you had to be careful while pouring because there was quite a lot of sediment left in the bottles...

Taking the chance to ask something else here to the knowledgeable folks: I hear WY 1318 can add a nice mouthfeel too... it is one of the "hottest" yeasts being used nowadays in the whole NEIPA craze thing, right?
How does this compare to Denny's, WY 1450?
I hear it should ferment more vigourously and faster than Denny's (meaning for me, dry hopping and bottling sooner). It will for sure be somehow fruitier... otherwise?
It is definitely on my list of yeasts to try out next.

 

[Yooper]

Wyeast 1318 and Wyeast 1450 are totally different. 1450 gives a fuller mouthfeel and silkiness without the beer being sweet or underattenuated. 1318 gives slightly sweet result, fruity, and soft mouthfeel. It’s definitely an English strain, with typical English character.

 

[Taket_al_Tauro]

OK thank you for the info! I'll definitely check out 1318 sometime soon and see for myself what the craze surrounding this yeast is all about.

 

[divrack]

I wouldn't worry too much about O2. For what it's worth I think it's a massively overrated problem. Its one of these issues that unless you are going to leave the beer for months you won't notice. This forum is great but it definitely makes you go a bit crazy if you take everyone's warnings serious.
Low hot side O2 brewing for example. Suddenly I thought I must be a fool to have thought my beers were great and changed up my methods to minimize O2 everywhere. The result was a poor first batch due to messing up other things and once I got it down I managed to make beer that tasted identical to my previous beers but with more difficulty.

Christ, I went down a rabbit hole here the other day that started with genetic sequencing of yeast dna and ended up deep in the murky Waters of polyphenols and tranmutative something or other. Great stuff, but sometimes it's best to just let yeasts play with wort.

 

[Taket_al_Tauro]

Aaha, thanks, quite reassuring
Above all, I started worrying about oxidation when I read that some of the most successful commercial brewers of hoppy beer do apparently take this issue very seriously, and go to great lengths to reduce oxygen as much as possible...
As I said I have been happy with my latest IPA attempts, yet there is still room for improvement, for sure. Especially in the aroma department. I feel some of the best commercial examples I tasted had this huge, punchy, in-your-face hop nose when fresh. I definitely had good aroma in my last IPAs, but maybe just not that level of intensity yet, despite some rather big dry hop addditions (5-6 oz for 5 gals).
So I thought oxidation (post-fermentation) might be something to focus on next...

Concerning low hot-side O2, not knowing anything about it, from a purely intuitive perspective I also think it shouldn't make a big difference. We are aerating the hell out of the wort anyway at the end of the brew day, so why try to minimize oxygen uptake just a few hours earlier?...

 

[divrack]

Aaha, thanks, quite reassuring
Above all, I started worrying about oxidation when I read that some of the most successful commercial brewers of hoppy beer do apparently take this issue very seriously, and go to great lengths to reduce oxygen as much as possible...
As I said I have been happy with my latest IPA attempts, yet there is still room for improvement, for sure. Especially in the aroma department. I feel some of the best commercial examples I tasted had this huge, punchy, in-your-face hop nose when fresh. I definitely had good aroma in my last IPAs, but maybe just not that level of intensity yet, despite some rather big dry hop addditions (5-6 oz for 5 gals).
So I thought oxidation (post-fermentation) might be something to focus on next...

Concerning low hot-side O2, not knowing anything about it, from a purely intuitive perspective I also think it shouldn't make a big difference. We are aerating the hell out of the wort anyway at the end of the brew day, so why try to minimize oxygen uptake just a few hours earlier?...

Yeah I think the thing is that these breweries have to ship beer all over and need to minimize fade of all that expensive hop and also are able to keep O2 out fairly easy.
We have the luxury of drinking it all fresh.

For that mega hop burst I would recommend a good chunk of the hops in at day 4 of active fermentation. It'll be a bit hazy but who cares.. you can reduce that using cryo hop powder.

 

[Taket_al_Tauro]

I actually want to try dry-hopping before the end of primary fermentation in one of my next batches. As for the haze, I absolutely don't care about it either. Actually, I do even prefer the look of beers with a little haze most of the times. The only thing I prefer to avoid is ending up with large amounts of yeast sediment in the bottles.

Christ, I went down a rabbit hole here the other day that started with genetic sequencing of yeast dna and ended up deep in the murky Waters of polyphenols and tranmutative something or other. Great stuff, but sometimes it's best to just let yeasts play with wort.

... you mean that huge thread that started with DNA-analysis of Treehouse yeast? Saw that as well. Man its amazing to what levels of passion (obsession?) homebrewing can drive people... I start to feel I am seriously in danger too ;-). But it is great stuff indeed!