How to keep Hazy/NE IPAs tasting fresh?

[Dgallo]

Pour a light lager into a glass, then pour a hazy ipa into a glass.
Wait 48 hours then do the eye, nose and taste test. I assure you the heavily hopped hazy will have deviated far more than the lager.

Another thing for the op to consider when keeping hoppy beer in a keg for a couple months is ingress through your lines. Regardlessl of purging processes, you will definitely be introducing O2 through your serving line as well as gas line. Thankfully there are O2 reducing lines that can help

Great idea. That will prove it for you @moreb33rplz You’ll see the color change and stale flavor/aroma right in front of your eyes

 

[Bobby_M]

My personal experience is that my NEIPAs that I've open transferred vs closed transferred vs fermented/served in the same keg, all taste basically the same. I'm only one guy, and I haven't brewed a zillion NEIPAS, but I've been brewing for 15 years and am not a total beer troglodyte.

Maybe NEIPA behaves the exact same as every other beer? Maybe oxidation isn't perceptible unless certain factors are involved? Maybe I'm full of crap? Maybe the online consensus of NEIPAs being super susceptible to oxidation is full of crap?

If you can't tell a difference, I'd lean towards the fact that your threshold for oxidation traits is higher than normal. Oxidition is the biggest flaw in homebrewed NEIPA. I was at a BJCP comp where all the bottles that didn't make BOS where popped and poured and almost all the NEIPAs were brown, muddy and had no hop character left.

 

[Die_Beerery]

I’m not doubting your experience but You are incorrect here.

So you don’t think your just taking advice from a hber..... ready away.
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/impact-cold-side-oxidation-new-england-ipa/

http://scottjanish.com/headspace-hazy-ipa-oxidation/

http://brulosophy.com/2017/09/11/the-impact-of-cold-side-oxidation-on-new-england-ipa-exbeeriment-results/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/beerandbrewing.com/amp/avoiding-oxidation

https://companyweek.com/articles/the-tricky-task-of-canning-hazy-ipas

Just so you know I agree with you on o2 and oxidation. However, all these sources you cite are from homebrewers who have ZERO scientific credentials. So in a sense you are asking him to just ask another hber, so I would take those references with a grain of salt.
All the papers you seek are behind paywalls. Brewingscience.de and MBAA, have what you seek for real scientific data. I may have some posted on my site in the references section as well (I know I have them all, but not sure if they are up yet or not), these are infact TRUE scientific papers. http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/uncategorized/list-of-brewing-references/

 

[Dgallo]

Just so you know I agree with you on o2 and oxidation. However, all these sources you cite are from homebrewers who have ZERO scientific credentials. So in a sense you are asking him to just ask another hber, so I would take those references with a grain of salt.
All the papers you seek are behind paywalls. Brewingscience.de and MBAA, have what you seek for real scientific data. I may have some posted on my site in the references section as well (I know I have them all, but not sure if they are up yet or not), these are infact TRUE scientific papers. http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/uncategorized/list-of-brewing-references/

I guess it could be seen that way but 3 of the articles come from successful professional brewers and reference their sources

 

[Die_Beerery]

I guess it could be seen that way but 3 of the articles come from successful professional brewers and reference their sources

Who I know some that are just glorified homebrewers turned commercial. Thats not to say they are not good brewers, but they are not scientists.

 

[moreb33rplz]

I guess I'm just a contrarian, but my point is that the issue is not 'closed'. An example: One of the Janish blog posts he shows side by side images of the same batch of beer, one normal, one a seemingly oxidized glass of brown sludge. He theorizes the reason is the lid on his fermenting keg was leaky, thus oxidizing the beer.

I think that's ridiculous. There are a lot of reasons why those beers could be different. Expanding this to the larger question, I am inclined to agree that evidence suggests NEIPA may be more susceptible to oxidation, but to what degree, and due to what factors?

My personal experience suggests that doing open transfers of NEIPA imparts no noticeable oxidation. Maybe oxidation occurs but to an imperceptible degree? Maybe I drink my beers quickly enough that the threshold of perception isn't met? Maybe it's the type of hops I use? Maybe it's my water chemistry? Maybe it's one of a million other things?

There is a lot of nuance left to be figured out. And I like reading HBT and Janish and Brulosophy and all the other cool things us homebrewers put on the internet, but we also tend to be 'jump on the bandwagon' group of people, and none of us are proving anything, we're just sharing our personal experience.

 

[blizz81]

There is a lot of nuance left to be figured out. And I like reading HBT and Janish and Brulosophy and all the other cool things us homebrewers put on the internet, but we also tend to be 'jump on the bandwagon' group of people, and none of us are proving anything, we're just sharing our personal experience.

For me, the results of years of brewing highly-hopped beers (NEIPA or not) and seeing them muddle up into the same somewhat-sweet generic hop profile and grow darker in color (there, I'd say more noticeable in NEIPA vs. a clear IPA/DIPA) and then seeing that not happen and have crisp hop definition that lasts for a while when I've taken care to reduce oxygen exposure is enough anecdotal evidence for me on a homebrewing level. I'll say that people have had the muddied hopped beer and thought it was good / sometimes preferred it in cases where I was trying to clone a commercial brew, so everyone's subjective tastes are different.

Both malt-focused beers as well as some beers that were hop-focused but still had a relatively small amount of hops (small and large is obviously subjective, but for comparison I don't bat an eye using 10+oz of hops in 5gal batches esp for NEIPA) have not had a similar large swing in flavor, and until very recently I've been penny-pinching and not using CO2 to sanitizer purge kegs / closed transfer on said batches.

After recently doing CO2 sanitizer keg purges and closed transfers on hopped beer and having success, on my last NEIPA batch my cold crash balloon popped and I had it exposed for a few minutes in my ferm chamber with the freezer lid open at times while I rigged up another balloon (I'm sure I tried to minimize the time the lid was open, and I had hoped that the latent CO2 in the freezer would minimize O2 damage). It was awesome when originally kegged / for the first week or so. After that in a matter of days it turned into a vomit-colored mess with the same sweet, cloying, "this tastes like it has a lot of hops in it but they're muted and now taste like no one hop on earth" flavor I'm all too familiar with.

You may not get the research-level scientific white papers proof you seek currently, especially specific to effects on hopped beers vs. not (and I think it'd be cool if scientists smarter than me would get together in such an effort). You're obviously fine to have whatever viewpoint you have on the subject from your own anecdotal experience vs. other brewers and enjoy your beers however you want to brew them. Don't be surprised if there's something to all of the hubbub in the end as more people continue to support specific viewpoints, be it homebrewers or professional brewers. Usually there are good reasons the brewing community sways these ways and I don't think by and large we contradict ourselves much in ways that aren't in the end progressive thanks to new knowledge / new equipment affording new technique/practices, etc.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I'll say that people have had the muddied hopped beer and thought it was good / sometimes preferred it

On thing that I learned this year is that not all the sweet/caramel flavors and gold colors in my beers were from Crystal malt. I bottle some small hop sampler batches. Now that I understand better how oxidation shows in a beer, I notice it often with those beers, where in the past I likely would not have attributed the flavors to oxidation.

I made a couple process improvements this year, so sometimes it is hard to pinpoint the actual cause of improvement, but water chemistry and closed keg transfers both appear to have dramatic improvements in the quality of my beers...especially IPAs.

I did a minor experiment this year where I had 3 hopped beers on tap. One was a moderately hopped NEIPA; one was a IPA with the exact same hops; one was a Pale Ale that minimally hopped (maybe 4 oz total, 1 oz dry hops). I sat the 3 out in small glasses. The NEIPA and IPA turned a deep brown very quickly. The Pale Ale darked a little, but not nearly like the heavily hopped beers.

 

[Bobby_M]

My personal experience suggests that doing open transfers of NEIPA imparts no noticeable oxidation. Maybe oxidation occurs but to an imperceptible degree? Maybe I drink my beers quickly enough that the threshold of perception isn't met? Maybe it's the type of hops I use? Maybe it's my water chemistry? Maybe it's one of a million other things?

I'm glad you use the word "suggests". Without outside blind evaluation of your beers, all you have is your own personal experience. If you are happy with the beer and you brew it for yourself, you don't have anything to worry about and there really isn't a conversation to be had is there? For all I know, your NEIPA style beers are so badly brewed across the board that a little oxidation is the least of your problems. I wouldn't assume that, but that is one plausible explanation.

As a homebrew shop proprietor, I'm asked to taste a LOT of beer. I'm often pleasantly impressed by good beer quality from many people. Unfortunately I also have to hold back a spit-take of some horrible beer that the brewer was really proud of making.

If you're really curious about the state of your beer, enter some competitions. If you get a few sheets back without the oxidized box checked, you're golden.

I'll give you my own anectodal view on it. I've been brewing for 14 years and occasionally entered beer into comps. In general, only beers where oxidation and other small flaws would otherwise be well covered up did well (English Barleywine for example). Early last year, I switched to 100% oxygen free transfers and began to destroy in comps. There was one comp where I entered 3 beers and got 3 golds and a 2nd best in show. One of the golds was a NEIPA. I can tell you with high confidence that it would have been impossible only a year earlier.

 

[moreb33rplz]

Good points by all. To repeat it too, my standard practice is to ferment and serve from the same keg.