NEIPA Brewing Procedures

[couchsending]

For any hoppy beer that you want more hop flavor and aromatics from getting yeast out of the beer before adding dry hops is IMHO advisable.

It depends on your yeast a bit too. I’ve been using a highly flocculent yeast lately that doesn’t require much if any temp drop to flocculate so I can get away with a “soft crash” that’s only down to 63 or so.

If you think biotransformation is key adding some hops at the very very tail end of fermentation is maybe the way to go but personally I’d keep the larger dose of hops until after fermentation is done.

Personally I just prefer the pure expression of the hops and not the “overripe” or “rotting” fruit character.

 

[day_trippr]

Thanks for the response. I had read your prior recommendations on the technique and decided to give it a try on the last iteration of my Juicy Bits clone and crashed to 50°F before the first round of dry hops. Which I dropped in right at the end of the soft-crash, so the beer was right about 50°F.

What happened was the three ounces of pellets dropped to the bottom like gravel and laid there. After a couple of days I was provoked to swirl the two carboys to try to at least break the damned things into mush. And even after I (3 days later) ramped the beer to 68°F before pitching the second round, that all went straight to the bottom as well, and little of it ever rose up.

So...in almost 16 years of brewing, this was all totally new - and weird - to me. Not sure what to expect - I'll just have to wait 'til that beer hits the keezer to see if the hop utilization is anywhere near my usual "knock your socks off" bombs.

I'll add, one should consider individual taste - or even genetics - may affect perception, before condemning a common brewing practice. I've been bio-hopping all of my neipas for the last two years and I have never gotten any comments wrt "overripe" or worse hop characters. Quite the contrary, indeed. You just might be the outlier...

Cheers!

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I'll add, one should consider individual taste - or even genetics - may affect perception, before condemning a common brewing practice. [...] You just might be the outlier

A link to the "brewing science" behind this idea (that people have different thresholds for detecting flavors) can be found in the book The New IPA chapter 5, 3rd paragraph.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

Are you still an advocate of soft-crashing an neipa before dry hopping?

Cheers!

The cold crash then dry hop method has worked pretty well for me but I've also been playing around with dry hopping some of my hoppy pale ales/IPAs at around 60-72 hours when fermentation is slowing but still active and then capping with a spunding valve. I know this isn't a novel concept and a lot of people are doing it but it also seems to work pretty well and I haven't gotten any weird or off-flavors. I really hate opening my FV after fermentation is done because I think it's really hard to remove all the O2 that gets in even if you purge afterwards.

My biggest concern with doing this on my IPAs that have the really massive dry hop loads is the beer sitting on it too long though. I've read and heard some interesting info on podcasts lately about dry hopping for shorter amounts of time to pull out the oils and leave the undesirable stuff behind. Janish wrote an interesting article recently about it and I also heard Alvarado Street say they do short dry hop periods when they do a huge dry hop.

 

[couchsending]

I'll add, one should consider individual taste - or even genetics - may affect perception, before condemning a common brewing practice. I've been bio-hopping all of my neipas for the last two years and I have never gotten any comments wrt "overripe" or worse hop characters. Quite the contrary, indeed. You just might be the outlier...

Cheers!

I would agree with you. People perceive a lot of compounds in beer and food and many other things totally different. Some people have higher or lower thresholds for certain compounds than others.

That being said there are plenty of studies and sensory data you can find out there in regards to the sulfur compounds created by yeast and contact time with high alpha hops and the detrimental effect it can have on the yeast and in turn beer. Some people are more sensitive to those sulfur compounds than others. Once you identify those compounds you’d be amazed how many “NEIPAs” you will find them in.

Even the biggest (or at least the original) advocate for biotransformation dry hopping, Matt Brynildson recommends adding hops with less than .2 plato to go and then trying to remove as much hop and yeast material as soon as the beer passes VDK. Then he adds the second round. Their yeast floccs without virtually any help so they can keep it at higher temps and get faster extraction.

The “soft crash” technique I recommend is more to get as much yeast out of solution as possible before adding hops in order to maximize the aroma and flavor impact from those hops. Listen to professional brewer that brews top notch hoppy beers and they will tell you the same. Does t matter what style if hoppy beer it is.

Sean Lawson, Shaun Hill, Henry Nguyen, Aslin brewing, Julian Shrago, Melvin brewing, etc etc etc. A lot depends on the yeast you use and how best to get it to flocc without going too low.

In regards to pellets sinking.. pellet densities can be very different. The guys with big contracts even get to specify he density of their pellets. I always find the most impactful pellets when dry hopping are the ones that crumble easily. Most likely means there wasn’t as much heat created in the pelletizing process so you have pellets with more in tact oil content and also they don’t sink straight to the bottom.

Great MBAA podcast recently with a bunch of large commercial craft brewers talking about dry hopping techniques. Interesting to hear them say that they will have pellets instantly fall to the bottom of even really large tanks and that almost all of them used some sort of Co2 rousing except on the biggest tanks they had.

 

[rmchair]

I like all these takes. Good thoughts.

I'll add that oats have been nothing but a multi-grain tasting, cloggy mess for me. I'm done with them outside of making a stout.

Id also note that having been to the Boston IPA fest, along with Trillium as well as having the best "off Broadway" Neipas at Narrow Gauge, Great Notion, and Southern Prohibition, and none of those beers are as sweet as the the ones being brewed back here on Tatooine. Most regular Joes are not getting enough IBU, or at least IBU effect.

Not all bitterness is bad. If you think like a foodie, you want some bitter tang to offset that sweet malt. I just had a can of Heady and was surprised that it finished with a little bite. Nothing compared to Green Flash, but still a decent identifiable note.

 

[day_trippr]

Ok, so the verdict is in, and it isn't great. Following the "soft crash first" philosophy resulted in plainly inferior hop utilization to my two unaware and mostly impartial testers, and more importantly, me.

Clearly pellets that sit on the bottom and never rise isn't a great strategy for dry hopping.

The concept of CO2 "rousing" in a flat bottomed fermentor would just put all those undesirables back in play. Maybe conicals could pull that off, but it's no panacea with carboys.

Gave it a shot, won't do it again...

Cheers!

 

[jturman35]

I like all these takes. Good thoughts.

I'll add that oats have been nothing but a multi-grain tasting, cloggy mess for me. I'm done with them outside of making a stout.

Id also note that having been to the Boston IPA fest, along with Trillium as well as having the best "off Broadway" Neipas at Narrow Gauge, Great Notion, and Southern Prohibition, and none of those beers are as sweet as the the ones being brewed back here on Tatooine. Most regular Joes are not getting enough IBU, or at least IBU effect.

Not all bitterness is bad. If you think like a foodie, you want some bitter tang to offset that sweet malt. I just had a can of Heady and was surprised that it finished with a little bite. Nothing compared to Green Flash, but still a decent identifiable note.

What Southern Prohibition beers you like? I haven’t had many of the king IPA’s such as King Sue, Heady, or any Trillium beers but always thought So Pro pumped out some amazing beer for little ole MS.

 

[Mer-man]

...
Any recipe or info from Anders Kissmeyer is worth paying attention to. He worked at Carlsberg for a long time before opening his own brewery which is where I believe Shaun was employed in Denmark when he was there. Was voted best brewer in the world for a while. Has forgotten more than a lot of people will ever know.

Shaun worked out at Fanø (west coast of the country, tiny place) and then Nørrebro (Copenhagen, middle of the road type brewery).

Regardless of voting, the beers coming out of Kissmeyer's brewery have broadly been garbage in brightly-colored packaging for at least the last few years. He has definitely forgotten a lot about brewing.