Lack of aroma.....

[Panderson1]

5th batch since this year (used to brew a lot 5 years ago). All IPA recipes with lots of late additions and dry hopping both in fermenter and keg. Hardly any aroma. I've been thinking it's oxygen related but directly after kegging I sample some (flat) and I'm very disappointed considering that I dryhoping with 2 to 3oz each time as well as some whirlpooled. 6.5 gallon batches. The hops smell great out of the bags. I've been getting them from Austin HB.

Any thoughts?

 

[day_trippr]

Five questions: What kind of fermentor, do you use a "secondary", do you cold-crash, do you do closed-transfers for all rackings, how do you carbonate your kegs?

Cheers!

 

[Panderson1]

Five questions: What kind of fermentor, do you use a "secondary", do you cold-crash, do you do closed-transfers for all rackings, how do you carbonate your kegs?

Cheers!

*1 conical (12 gal) and a also a new firmzilla (12 gal). So maybe too much headspace for 6 gal?
*No secondary
*Yes cold crash. So maybe oxygen sucking in.
* i did my 1st closed transfer with the firmzilla and went smoothly.
* i force carb. 25 psi 2 days then drop to 12. I purge like crazy.

Does oxygen really have that much of an effect after only a few days exposure? And I wouldn't imagine it's a lot. I'm thinking the cold crashing is the culprit?

Thanks

 

[day_trippr]

Well, from your response set, that's the place I would definitely start.
I cold-crashed my first neipa and it went down hill rapidly. Now I have a process where I can still serve a nice fruity beer from 6 month old kegs.

I don't know that the primary head space is a problem or not, I've never faced that one myself. Could be, hopefully others will have some perspective on that one...

Cheers!

[edit] Whoops! Left one off my list: do you purge your kegs? If so, how? If not, that's 1B thing to do

 

[Bilsch]

Oxygen works relatively fast at ruining your fresh hop and malt aromas and flavors.

 

[Immocles]

1 conical (12 gal) and a also a new firmzilla (12 gal). So maybe too much headspace for 6 gal?

I've had terrible results dry hopping with large headspace in the fermenter. I used to use a 6.5G fermenter for all my brews (3G batches), but anything that I had dry hopped wasn't nearly as good as the non dry hopped beers. I had better luck when I started using a 3G fermenter with greatly reduced headspace. I'm not saying this is your issue, but it could be a piece of it.