Uninspiring IPAs

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I agree that controlling oxygen exposure is crucial, but I have a hard time believing that all of the OP's IPA attempts have been lacking hop aroma and flavor due to oxidation. If the hoppiness was diminishing rapidly over a few weeks I would agree that oxidation was the issue here, but it seems this is immediate from day 1... thoughts?
 
Cavpilot2000 said:
Yes. I didn't specify how to purge the keg, but filling it with STar-San and then pushing that out with CO2 is Low Oxygen brewing SOP.
I also agree that keg-to-keg is easy, but I think he said he only has one keg.
Click to expand...
For "low oxygen SOP," I would suggest a low foaming sanitizer, i.e. iodophor. Or maybe Saniclean if you're not concerned with about the potential flavor impact. Star San is high foam, and foam = bubbles full of air. My $0.02.
 
Steveg229 said:
I would try RO water and just add basic additions of calcium chloride and gypsum and see what happens.
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^^ yes

I agree that the main issue here affecting hop aroma is cold side oxygen exposure, but when trying to troubleshoot and improve any beer for any reason, it seems crazy to me to embark on such an exercise without doing everything you can to strictly control your water. I mean, low hanging fruit and all that.

It doesn't require any special techniques or equipment - you just need to spend a few bucks on some water and use it. In doing so, you've controlled more variables and can further isolate the IPA issues you want to nail down. You're free to go back to tap water later if you like, but I strongly doubt you'll want to after you try RO.
 
Steven Barrett said:
Grains:
4.2 kg 2-row
1.2 kg Rye malt
800 g Maris Otter
400 g Cara-Pils
100 g Rice hulls

Hops:
Green Bullet - 10 g @ 45 min
Nelson Sauvin - 7 g @ 30 min
Green Bullet - 10 g @ 15 min
Nelson Sauvin - 21 g @ 5 min
Green Bullet - 14 g @ 5 min

Nelson Sauvin - 72 g dry-hop for 5 days (in primary)
Green Bullet - 58 g dry-hop for 5 days (in primary)

Misc: 1 Whirlfloc Tab at 5 min

Yeast: US-05 Safale (1 pack, rehydrated)

Mash was 152 F, no sparge. Efficiency was a bit low. Around 65% or so. I usually use campden but we brewed at my buddy’s and I forgot to bring them. I tried to use some LODO methods, preboil and chill mash water, full grain bed some below, minimize splashing, but we lost LODO when our tubing was too wide for the mash tun valve and started sucking in a lot of air.

My water is Chicago which has quarterly published water reports. It’s quite soft water. Only something like Pilsen would require RO to get TDS down even lower. (I have not tested the actual water in my home.)

I am interested in trying RO to see the difference it makes.

The beer is not a horrifying brown. It is quite golden and a bit hazy, despite me fining with gelatin and using a top draw floating dip tube.

Oh and the Nelson Sauvin boil hops were stale, not much aroma and heading towards brown, not bright green, despite still being in the package. (I since got fresh replacement hops from the vendor but the stale ones went into the boil.)
Click to expand...

Here's my 2¢...

I think you def need to try to either a) get your water tested or b) start using distilled or r/o water...either way you know what your working with...and then you can build from there...

In converting grams to ounces...you used a total of around 7.5 ounces or so of hops total...consider uping the total to the 10-12 oz range...while the amount you used is fine...I think the sweetest spot for IPA is within that 10-12 oz range for 5 gallons

Start whirlpooling some hops...this is one of the best techniques you can use to help up your flavor and aroma profiles...target at minimal 4 oz.

Drop all hop additions before 5 minutes and shift them to under 5 minutes...if you need or want higher ibus you can add a small charge at 60 mins of 1 hop like Columbus or Magnum and then hold all other additions to 5 mins left or less...10 mins at the absolute earliest...

Pick a better yeast....while S05 is a great base yeast...it has little ester production...try a yeast that has a higher ester production profile to help enhance the hop character...drive the temp on it to its highest limit to help with ester production

Dry hop as late as possible...I wait till about 3-4 days before I keg to add dry hops...then a second charge a day after the first one goes in...this will give you that out of the bag aroma and enhance percieved flavor...

Lastly...LIMIT O2 EXPOSURE...[emoji482]
 
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marchuk96 said:
Here's my 2¢...

I think you def need to try to either a) get your water tested or b) start using distilled or r/o water...either way you know what your working with...and then you can build from there...

In converting grams to ounces...you used a total of around 7.5 ounces or so of hops total...consider uping the total to the 10-12 oz range...while the amount you used is fine...I think the sweetest spot for IPA is within that 10-12 oz range for 5 gallons

Start whirlpooling some hops...this is one of the best techniques you can use to help up your flavor and aroma profiles...target at minimal 4 oz.

Drop all hop additions before 5 minutes and shift them to under 5 minutes...if you need or want higher ibus you can add a small charge at 60 mins of 1 hop like Columbus or Magnum and then hold all other additions to 5 mins left or less...10 mins at the absolute earliest...

Pick a better yeast....while S05 is a great base yeast...it has little ester production...try a yeast that has a higher ester production profile to help enhance the hop character...drive the temp on it to its highest limit to help with ester production

Dry hop as late as possible...I wait till about 3-4 days before I keg to add dry hops...then a second charge a day after the first one goes in...this will give you that out of the bag around and enhance percieved flavor...

Lastly...LIMIT O2 EXPOSURE...[emoji482]
Click to expand...


Your advice is pretty spot on for a NEIPA. Really good advice for a NEIPA. Neipas are really good beers if that's what your intending to make.

After your first paragraph, I disagree with literally everything else you have to say if you are talking about a traditional IPA.

7.5 oz is perfect for a 5 gallon traditional IPA
Whirlpool is really popular for neipa and while some IPAs can benefit from it, plain ol flame out hops work great. Drop hop additions below 5 mins? No, No, No. Feel free to use them at 60, 45, 30, 15, 10, 5 or zero. There are more traditional timings, but any of those are fine. I'd encourage more in the 15 range. Hops can be and are useful for more than 60 min additions, whirlpooling and dry hopping. Again, NEIPAs are great beers, but please for the sake of history, do not confuse them with traditional IPAs. They are not. They are also not brewed the same way.

Pick a better yeast than S-05!?! Whisky Tango Foxtrot man. That is literally the dry version of the most well known go to yeast of all time for IPAs. You're not looking for punch you in the face ester formation in a traditional IPA ... again its not a neipa.

I go back to my original statement. People have forgotten what an IPA is.


Edit: I feel like this right now ...
https://images.app.goo.gl/GsZuYbWUeYR5zrex9
 
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Jtvann said:
Your advice is pretty spot on for a NEIPA. Really good advice for a NEIPA. Neipas are really good beers if that's what your intending to make.

After your first paragraph, I disagree with literally everything else you have to say if you are talking about a traditional IPA.

7.5 oz is perfect for a 5 gallon traditional IPA
Whirlpool is really popular for neipa and while some IPAs can benefit from it, plain ol flame out hops work great. Drop hop additions below 5 mins? No, No, No. Feel free to use them at 60, 45, 30, 15, 10, 5 or zero. There are more traditional timings, but any of those are fine. I'd encourage more in the 15 range. Hops can be and are useful for more than 60 min additions, whirlpooling and dry hopping. Again, NEIPAs are great beers, but please for the sake of history, do not confuse them with traditional IPAs. They are not. They are also not brewed the same way.

Pick a better yeast than S-05!?! Whisky Tango Foxtrot man. That is literally the dry version of the most well known go to yeast of all time for IPAs. You're not looking for punch you in the face ester formation in a traditional IPA ... again its not a neipa.

I go back to my original statement. People have forgotten what an IPA is.
Click to expand...
My apologies...I probably should have asked that question first huh...new england or non new england??...I just assumed..but i still think what I mentioned can still be applied..just not on the new england scale if the intent is just IPA...a small whirlpool will help and certainly later boil hops if your wanting more aroma on your beer which is what the original issue was...without adding more hops which you seemed to be opposed to doing which is fine...the only thing to do is shift hops around to favor more aroma and flavor and use a yeast that will produce a bit more esters to help with aromatics and flavor..but before that happens maybe just focus on the water and O2 pick up...then on hops and timing...and then yeast...
 
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As OP, I am trying to brew a classic west coast IPA. Not Pliny 100+ IBU but 70 IBU or so. And a clear or mostly clear beer, so the dry hopping can’t be absurd.
 
Steven Barrett said:
As OP, I am trying to brew a classic west coast IPA. Not Pliny 100+ IBU but 70 IBU or so. And a clear or mostly clear beer, so the dry hopping can’t be absurd.
Click to expand...
OK so now that we have cleared the air there...your dry hop amount looks good man...take what I mentioned with a grain of salt...pick one thing tweak it till your happy and then move on to the next...I think a whirlpool will benefit you the most in the long run...and it doesn't have to be massive... west coast guys are whirlpooling hops and in decent quantities...
 
Robert65 said:
For "low oxygen SOP," I would suggest a low foaming sanitizer, i.e. iodophor. Or maybe Saniclean if you're not concerned with about the potential flavor impact. Star San is high foam, and foam = bubbles full of air. My $0.02.
Click to expand...

True that low foaming is ideal, but most brewers have Star San on hand. Most don’t have the others unless they have a specific reason to have it. I have used Star San many times for this procedure, but the trick is fill with water first, THEN add the Star San to the full keg. No water spraying/ splashing= no foam. Once you seal it up, turn it upside down once or twice and voila - it’s mixed with no foam.
 
Cavpilot2000 said:
True that low foaming is ideal, but most brewers have Star San on hand. Most don’t have the others unless they have a specific reason to have it. I have used Star San many times for this procedure, but the trick is fill with water first, THEN add the Star San to the full keg. No water spraying/ splashing= no foam. Once you seal it up, turn it upside down once or twice and voila - it’s mixed with no foam.
Click to expand...
My only objection to that would be, if you have to mix a batch specifically for each keg purge and discard, iodophor is way cheaper. One reason iodophor is my primary sanitizer. But you've got a perfectly viable.... wait, why do I feel like saying vector, Victor? [emoji6]
 
Robert65 said:
My only objection to that would be, if you have to mix a batch specifically for each keg purge and discard, iodophor is way cheaper. One reason iodophor is my primary sanitizer. But you've got a perfectly viable.... wait, why do I feel like saying vector, Victor? [emoji6]
Click to expand...

Good point.
I usually use saniclean, but have been using Star San lately with procedure as described because I’m out of Saniclean and have been lazy about getting more. I have been doing a batch per keg, which is wasteful, no doubt.
I have iodophors but never use it because I am paranoid about residual iodine flavor, though my paranoia is likely misplaced and unfounded.

Now can I get a clearance, Clarence?
 
I just use plain old water when I do the full liquid purge. I have a bucket of Starsan that I use for awhile before replacing so I'll sanitize the keg then empty the Starsan, then fill with water and purge. If you're worried about bubbles that would solve that problem. It's not like it's your fermenter, you're filling it with beer with alcohol. And most people's tap water is pretty sanitary, remember when we used to top off our partial boil extract batches with it?
 
I use a carboy for fermentation and 3 gallon pin-lock kegs.
How much oxidation is occurring in this process:

After fermentation, cold crashing done allowing air to suck back in.
Transfer to keg with standard siphon.
Seal keg
Attach CO2 to liquid-out post and push CO2 up through the beer.
Purge whatever comes out of the gas-in post.
Repeat gas/purge 2 more times.
Attach C02 to gas-in post and pressurize for carbonation and later serving.

I didn't think too much air would go in during cold crash, nor would it replace all the CO2 from fermentation.
Transfer does swirl a bit, but is pretty slow...how much damage is being done here?
I thought my purging process was pretty good, but hard to tell I guess.

Of these I think the easiest to fix without more equipment is the cold crash suck-back with a well-timed balloon attachment.
 
After fermentation, cold crashing done allowing air to suck back in.
Click to expand...

For a brew with lots of dry hops, that's all it takes.
Add in the open keg transfer and an neipa would be a browned mess very quickly...

Cheers!
 
Note that the dissolved oxygen resulting from any single element of the described process would be measured on the order of percentages or fractions thereof. Meanwhile, the amount of post fermentation dissolved oxygen which will inevitably lead to oxidative damage and staling is measured in parts per BILLION. You will be rewarded for anything and everything you can do to avoid introducing oxygen.
 
wsmith1625 said:
If your PH is too high, you will not get good hop utilization. Target PH is 5.2 in the mash. Don't buy the 5.2 PH Stabilizer like I did. If you read the reviews, it doesn't work and adds salt to your beer. Get your water professionally tested.
Click to expand...

You’re right to avoid 5.2 stabilizer — it buffers upward, not downward like people want. For that, just reduce residual alkalinity.

Hop utilization as a function of pH is a measure of isomerization. Nothing to do with aroma compounds.
 
WestMichBrewer said:
I use a carboy for fermentation and 3 gallon pin-lock kegs.
How much oxidation is occurring in this process:

After fermentation, cold crashing done allowing air to suck back in.
Transfer to keg with standard siphon.
Seal keg
Attach CO2 to liquid-out post and push CO2 up through the beer.
Purge whatever comes out of the gas-in post.
Repeat gas/purge 2 more times.
Attach C02 to gas-in post and pressurize for carbonation and later serving.

I didn't think too much air would go in during cold crash, nor would it replace all the CO2 from fermentation.
Transfer does swirl a bit, but is pretty slow...how much damage is being done here?
I thought my purging process was pretty good, but hard to tell I guess.

Of these I think the easiest to fix without more equipment is the cold crash suck-back with a well-timed balloon attachment.
Click to expand...

Using non-purged kegs and having everything just out in the open air while you transfer from carboy to keg is something you really should look at if you want to make the best IPA possible. Anecdotally, I started seeing amazing improvements on hoppy beers once I started purging kegs and doing closed transfers. There are lots of things in home brewing that are more dogma than proven beneficial, but oxygen avoidance on hoppy beers is definitely not one of those things.

As for cold crashing and dealing with suck-back, I'll take a probably controversial position here and ask, why bother with cold crashing at all? I don't understand everybody's insistence on this step. It's certainly not needed for clear beer, as the beer will "cold crash" in the serving keg over time (see photo of a recent non-cold-crashed pale ale I made). I guess with hoppy beers cold crashing helps address the problem of dry-hop matter clogging up your racking cane when you're transferring to kegs, but there are other ways of protecting against that.

Capture.PNG
 
Agreed - cold crashing is not necessary.
But, if you spund THEN cold crash for a few weeks once it has finished carbonating in the keg, you get the best of all worlds.
Oh wait...that's called lagering...;)
 
Cavpilot2000 said:
Oh wait...that's called lagering...;)
Click to expand...

Sure you can lager your ales... but can you ale your lagers?

I appreciate all the feedback. Are you guys doing closed transfers fermenting in glass carboys and closed transferring to kegs? Or fermenting in a keg and transferring to another? Since I only have one keg, the simplest solution seems to be fermenting in the serving keg. I have a floating top draw for my liquid line, so the only drawback I see is yeast autolysis. Should I be concerned about that?

Edit: Typo
 
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Steven Barrett said:
Sure you can lager your ales... but can you ale your lagers?

I appreciate all the feedback. Are you guys doing closed transfers fermenting in glass carboys and closed transferring to kegs? Or fermenting in a keg and transferring to another? Since I only have one keg, the simplest solution seems to be fermenting in the serving keg. I have a floating top draw for my liquid line, so the only drawback I see is yeast autolysis. Should I be concerned about that?

Edit: Typo
Click to expand...
I do keg to keg closed transfers but I began the closed transfer journey when I was using Better Bottle plastic carboys. You can use one of those orange caps with the 2 openings, and have a siphon in one(pulling the beer out) and CO2 gas pushing into the other. This didn't always go as smoothly as it does now for me but it certainly was better than an open transfer. It can be done with glass too but you obviously have to be very careful of how much pressure you push in so it doesn't explode on you.
 
Steven Barrett said:
Sure you can lager your ales... but can you ale your lagers?

I appreciate all the feedback. Are you guys doing closed transfers fermenting in glass carboys and closed transferring to kegs? Or fermenting in a keg and transferring to another? Since I only have one keg, the simplest solution seems to be fermenting in the serving keg. I have a floating top draw for my liquid line, so the only drawback I see is yeast autolysis. Should I be concerned about that?

Edit: Typo
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'd be leery of pressurized transfer with a carboy.
I started out with pressurized transfers using keg to keg, but didn't like that I could only put 5 gallons in the primary keg and end up with like 4.5-4.75 gal in serving, so I looked for an alternative that wasn't crazy expensive and settled on the SS Brewtech Brewbucket, of which I now have two and I love them. There is a less expensive/less features version out there but I can't remember who makes it - Stout?

I think yeast autolysis is overstated as a worry, because once you drop the whole affair down to serving temp, the yeast are pretty dormant anyway and not cannibalizing their fallen comrades. Those of us who spund end up with yeast in the serving keg for months on end with no detrimental effect. In fact, they can actually help clean up fermentation byproducts (diacetyl, etc). It definitely helps using a floating dip tube if you are spunding though (I use Clearbeer draft systems).
 
Does the Brewbucket form a tight seal to keep air out? Doesn’t appear gasketed so I wonder how well the metal on metal forms a seal?
 

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