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New England IPA "Northeast" style IPA

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How do you separate it out in your system? Do you have a hop stopper in the bottom of your kettle?

I have a big hop spider. Thinking I could use that...
With a good hot/cold break and whirlpool as it cools, pretty much everything cones inside of the immersion wort chiller and I rack off of the side. Probably leave about .50-.75 gallons behind and the wort it pretty clear.
 
I like to transfer as little trub as possible into my fermzilla, then I throw it in the fermentation fridge for like an hour and then remove the remaining trub that collected in the collection jar at the bottom. That usually takes care of most of it. Then I just sanitize the jar, put in the yeast, and put it back on and open it up and let her rip. I agree that hop spiders suck but I still use one as my anvil pump gets clogged so easily.
 
Have to say, the false bottom/filter design on the Grainfather G40 is an incredible piece of engineering and love being able to throw hops in loose now. I've gone with around 7-8oz hot side hops and so far with no issues at all. Will be doing a Pliny clone next with a lot of hot side hops so that will really put it to the test. Hated using a spider but the G30 didn't like hops at all.

I’ve got an older Grainfather connect and this really has me thinking about upgrading to the g40
 
I’ve got an older Grainfather connect and this really has me thinking about upgrading to the g40
It really is a an excellent upgrade I have to say. I was constantly maxing out my G30 and having to make adjustments in grain bills to keep under the max volume so loving the extra capacity. As I said the filter is second to none. The new controller PID is so stable too. Was getting lots of fluctuations in temperature with the old controller. Still working out a few kinks in my process but overall really happy with it.
 
It really is a an excellent upgrade I have to say. I was constantly maxing out my G30 and having to make adjustments in grain bills to keep under the max volume so loving the extra capacity. As I said the filter is second to none. The new controller PID is so stable too. Was getting lots of fluctuations in temperature with the old controller. Still working out a few kinks in my process but overall really happy with it.

better hop filtering would solve my biggest complaint. At that point my only hesitation really is that I’ve become lodo-curious and it’s difficult to achieve on an all in one. But the ease of use is probably worth that compromise
 
better hop filtering would solve my biggest complaint. At that point my only hesitation really is that I’ve become lodo-curious and it’s difficult to achieve on an all in one. But the ease of use is probably worth that compromise
There's trade off with every system unfortunately. None are perfect but the G40 ticks a lot of boxes for me.
 
I noticed a huge difference with my hop spider getting blocked depending on my additions. Any early additions and it just gets clogged. For all late addition hazys it was fine as it was only in the boil for a short period. I don't use it anymore though, my brewzilla does a pretty decent job. Gets all the hops and whatever cold break gets into the fermenter I leave for the yeast. Apparently the newer version filters out way more break though.
 
I noticed a huge difference with my hop spider getting blocked depending on my additions. Any early additions and it just gets clogged. For all late addition hazys it was fine as it was only in the boil for a short period. I don't use it anymore though, my brewzilla does a pretty decent job. Gets all the hops and whatever cold break gets into the fermenter I leave for the yeast. Apparently the newer version filters out way more break though.
You use the bottom plate to filter the hops?
 
There's trade off with every system unfortunately. None are perfect but the G40 ticks a lot of boxes for me.

Just curious -- what kind of efficiency are you getting with the g40? Have my eye on it and it looks like it might hit the sweet spot for what I am looking for in an electric brewing system.
 
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So the pictured beer is my newest NEIPA which I mentioned earlier. It was one of my best batches as of 2 days ago, and even after testing it twice before kegging, it has developed diacetyl as of yesterday. Have any of you ever had success with Krausening? Does it effect aroma and flavor significantly? I mean losing some aroma and flavor is better than having a beer with diacetyl but I’m just curious if I should just consider it a loss. Man I’m annoyed! Also, have any of you used ALDC for preventing diacetyl creation yet? I know professional breweries have been using it and that More Beer now sells it at the home brewer scale. I’ll definitely be picking some up before brewing another NEIPA.
 
View attachment 764314
So the pictured beer is my newest NEIPA which I mentioned earlier. It was one of my best batches as of 2 days ago, and even after testing it twice before kegging, it has developed diacetyl as of yesterday. Have any of you ever had success with Krausening? Does it effect aroma and flavor significantly? I mean losing some aroma and flavor is better than having a beer with diacetyl but I’m just curious if I should just consider it a loss. Man I’m annoyed! Also, have any of you used ALDC for preventing diacetyl creation yet? I know professional breweries have been using it and that More Beer now sells it at the home brewer scale. I’ll definitely be picking some up before brewing another NEIPA.

I had to look back at notes as it has been a while, oct 2020 apparently. I did a small beer (1.5%ABV ish) with S04 and I definitely rushed it cause it was such a low ABV. I did pitch an entire yeast packet, but assumed cause it only needed to ferment 12 points or so, I could rush. It developed this really odd aroma that i described as "chobani yogurt" and I hate chobani. It wasn't so much a buttered popcorn aroma, but I decided it was diaetyl for some reason. I ended up adding some DME and let it ferment again. Notes say it got better.

This beer did have a 4oz dry hop (~1oz/gal) but i don't recall what it did to the hop aroma, if anything cause the chobani was so overwhelming. In the end i noted the beer tasted like "trix cereal milk" and had a little vanilla to it. No idea where that came from as the hops were NHZ107 and i dont think they should have vanilla notes to them.
 
Just curious -- what kind of efficiency are you getting with the g40? Have my eye on it and it looks like it might hit the sweet spot for what I am looking for in an electric brewing system.
At the moment it's around 72% for a hazy dipa brewhouse but I still haven't got the system fully dialed in yet. The losses through the boil are proving difficult to get. The default is 3.5L/h on the 220/230V system but I'm getting closer to 5L/h. Lost 11L on a boil for a barleywine over the weekend. My efficiency was only in the 60s on that.
 
I had to look back at notes as it has been a while, oct 2020 apparently. I did a small beer (1.5%ABV ish) with S04 and I definitely rushed it cause it was such a low ABV. I did pitch an entire yeast packet, but assumed cause it only needed to ferment 12 points or so, I could rush. It developed this really odd aroma that i described as "chobani yogurt" and I hate chobani. It wasn't so much a buttered popcorn aroma, but I decided it was diaetyl for some reason. I ended up adding some DME and let it ferment again. Notes say it got better.

This beer did have a 4oz dry hop (~1oz/gal) but i don't recall what it did to the hop aroma, if anything cause the chobani was so overwhelming. In the end i noted the beer tasted like "trix cereal milk" and had a little vanilla to it. No idea where that came from as the hops were NHZ107 and i dont think they should have vanilla notes to them.
Thanks for the info. This is definitely diacetyl. I’ve had it happen a couple of times in the past so I started doing diacetyl tests and thought this one was good, but it has that very distinct butterscotch aroma (the flavor hasn’t been too badly effected yet) that I can’t stand. Good to know that Krausening can work though. I’ll have to do some research on how to do it
 
View attachment 764314
So the pictured beer is my newest NEIPA which I mentioned earlier. It was one of my best batches as of 2 days ago, and even after testing it twice before kegging, it has developed diacetyl as of yesterday. Have any of you ever had success with Krausening? Does it effect aroma and flavor significantly? I mean losing some aroma and flavor is better than having a beer with diacetyl but I’m just curious if I should just consider it a loss. Man I’m annoyed! Also, have any of you used ALDC for preventing diacetyl creation yet? I know professional breweries have been using it and that More Beer now sells it at the home brewer scale. I’ll definitely be picking some up before brewing another NEIPA.
Have you done any forced diacetyl test? That’s the best way to know for sure if any VDK is in your beer before packaging
 
Have you done any forced diacetyl test? That’s the best way to know for sure if any VDK is in your beer before packaging
Yes, I did two on this batch as the first test failed. And I brought the beer down to 50F for 24 hours after passing the test and before dry hopping at 55. Not sure how this happened unless I was just dead wrong on the second test.
 
Yes, I did two on this batch as the first test failed. And I brought the beer down to 50F for 24 hours after passing the test and before dry hopping at 55. Not sure how this happened unless I was just dead wrong on the second test.

Dry hopping can also lead to more (new) diacetyl, because of hop creep.
 
Dry hopping can also lead to more diacetyl.
I know it can when dry hopping at fermentation temps, but I dropped out the yeast and did a soft crash before dry hopping at 55. I’ve done the same on my last two batches and didn’t have this issue. Even after passing a forced test.
 
I know it can when dry hopping at fermentation temps, but I dropped out the yeast and did a soft crash before dry hopping at 55. I’ve done the same on my last two batches and didn’t have this issue. Even after passing a forced test.

You didn't have this (hop creep driven diacetyl) issue before, but the fact that this beer passed a forced diacetyl test and later had diacetyl is evidence that you did this time. So, it's a botched test, or hop creep, or an unwanted microbe, like Lacto or Pedio.

Nothing short of filtration (or pasteurization) gets rid of all the yeast. And lots of yeast strains (maybe most) are quite happy to work at 55F, though more slowly.

Keep in mind that when you pass a forced diacetyl test, that doesn’t mean that there is no diacetyl (or precursor). It means that the amount is below your taste threshold. You can be right on the edge of perceptible, so that any additional diacetyl becomes noticeable.
 
Hey guys! It’s been a while since I brewed; almost a year. Here is my recent batch hoppy pale ale 5.8% simple 50/50 grist of two row and pale wheat. Also threw in a little bit of flaked oats I had left over maybe a half pound. Almost 5 gallons in the keg. Added some talus and cascade in the boil around 15min and did a whirlpool with cascade, Amarillo and centennial. Fermented with one pack of s04 at 66 then raised to 68 for a day. Crashed to 50 for a day and dumped yeast from spike conical. Dry hopped at 58 with 8oz motueka and 2 oz riwaka for roughly 48 hours rousing from the bottom with c02 twice a day. Crashed to around 42 for a day and dumped all the hops. Then kegged. This pic is 16 days from grain to glass and it’s already good. Not as much dry hop pop as I wanted but that might get better in a few days. Could use a little more malt character but this is very crushable. I did kinda rush this brew a little. Oh well
 

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What dry hop temp and duration have you guys settled on? Is anyone rousing hops in a conical? Also, how much dry hops (oz) in a roughly 7 gallon batch in the fermenter are you using?
 
What dry hop temp and duration have you guys settled on? Is anyone rousing hops in a conical? Also, how much dry hops (oz) in a roughly 7 gallon batch in the fermenter are you using?
Soft crash yeast out at 50-55F before DH. DH for 24-48 hours at 55-60F. I don't swirl or shake fermenter after DH. I typically DH around 8-10oz for a 5 gallon batch, with about 6-6.5 gallons in fermentor. Most numbers I see are 2-2.5oz per gal, so YMMV.
 
10-14C in 48-72 hours. Shake a few times each day. Then cold crash.

300 g to 20 L.
 
10-14C in 48-72 hours. Shake a few times each day. Then cold crash.

300 g to 20 L.
I would probably only advise shaking the fermentor if you have a way to dump the yeast before DH. You don't really want to mix everything back into suspension, especially if you're soft crashing the yeast. This can lead to harshness and hop burn from the yeast/hop interaction. That's been my personal experience and a lot of what I've read over the past few years. Ever since I started soft crashing, then DH, I can drink out of the keg basically on day 2, without any harshness.
 
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Sim
What dry hop temp and duration have you guys settled on? Is anyone rousing hops in a conical? Also, how much dry hops (oz) in a roughly 7 gallon batch in the fermenter are you using?
Similar to others, I soft crash to 48f then dry hop at 55 to 58, I'm usually around 1.5 oz per gallon and lately I have been splitting the dry hop into 2 separate additions.. first half goes in and I rouse them in my conical after 12 hours, then after 24 hours add the second additon, rouse again 12 hours later then leave it alone for 24 to 36 hours, cold crash for at least 36 hours usually more like 48.
 
What dry hop temp and duration have you guys settled on? Is anyone rousing hops in a conical? Also, how much dry hops (oz) in a roughly 7 gallon batch in the fermenter are you using?

I've settled on something very similar as others here. Here is a sample assuming I start the process on day 10 after brewing, which might vary a bit. I find that if I dry hop too much below 65 degrees, everything sinks to the bottom pretty quickly. I'm not sure how much that affects the quality, but I tend to give it a full day after the soft crash to get back closer to 65. If the hops do float on the surface I will very gently swirl/rock the carboy to try to incorporate them more (if I think of it).

Day 10: soft crash to 50
day 11: bring beer back up to 60 to 65
day 12: add dry hop #1
day 13: add dry hop #2
Day 14: start cold crash
Day 15-16: keg
 
What dry hop temp and duration have you guys settled on? Is anyone rousing hops in a conical? Also, how much dry hops (oz) in a roughly 7 gallon batch in the fermenter are you using?

I have a spike CF5, my process is pretty similar to what others have said....
I soft crash at 55F wait 24hrs, dump yeast, dry hop #1 at 55F, gently rock fermenter, wait 24hrs, dump dh #1, dry hop #2, gently rock fermenter, wait 24hrs, dump dh #2, crash to 35F for 48hrs, dump hops and keg.

I will say that my hop aroma and flavor is not has pungent as I'd wish it would be for the amount I'm dry hopping. My total dry hop is at 2oz per gal so around 12oz, I can get 6gal in the cf5. I have a feeling the hops are dropping into my cf5 dump elbow and I'm not getting the best extraction. I really wish the dump port and elbow wasn't 2", in my opinion its way too big.

I just bought the below so that I can try rousing hops with co2 on my next batch.
https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/tc2blg.htm
 
I would probably only advise shaking the fermentor if you have a way to dump the yeast before DH. You don't really want to mix everything back into suspension, especially if you're soft crashing the yeast. This can lead to harshness and hop burn from the yeast/hop interaction. That's been my personal experience and a lot of what I've read over the past few years. Every since I started soft crashing, then DH, I can drink out of the keg basically on day 2, without any harshness.
Sure, I do cold crash and rack to a fermentation flushed pressure fermenter (SnubNose v3) before dry hopping and shaking.

My last NEIPA had the most hop intensity of all my NEIPAs. It was dry hopped at 10 C/50 F. Will stay on 10 C for my next brew.
 
I have a spike CF5, my process is pretty similar to what others have said....
I soft crash at 55F wait 24hrs, dump yeast, dry hop #1 at 55F, gently rock fermenter, wait 24hrs, dump dh #1, dry hop #2, gently rock fermenter, wait 24hrs, dump dh #2, crash to 35F for 48hrs, dump hops and keg.

I will say that my hop aroma and flavor is not has pungent as I'd wish it would be for the amount I'm dry hopping. My total dry hop is at 2oz per gal so around 12oz, I can get 6gal in the cf5. I have a feeling the hops are dropping into my cf5 dump elbow and I'm not getting the best extraction. I really wish the dump port and elbow wasn't 2", in my opinion its way too big.

I just bought the below so that I can try rousing hops with co2 on my next batch.
https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/tc2blg.htm
Yeah that’s what I use to blast c02 from the bottom. Use a sight glass and get rid of that elbow. You can then see the hops mixing and you also have less waste.
 
Sure, I do cold crash and rack to a fermentation flushed pressure fermenter (SnubNose v3) before dry hopping and shaking.

My last NEIPA had the most hop intensity of all my NEIPAs. It was dry hopped at 10 C/50 F. Will stay on 10 C for my next brew.
Wow 50f. It’s interesting, I might give it a try. Interesting tho that spec sheet from other half shows them dry hopping at fermentation temp of 72.
 
Wow 50f. It’s interesting, I might give it a try. Interesting tho that spec sheet from other half shows them dry hopping at fermentation temp of 72.

There are lots of brewers on this thread with a lot more success and experience brewing NEIPAs, but playing around with different hopping techniques and temps leads me to believe that if you are dry hopping in the 50F range, it really helps to have a way to rouse the hops to get better extraction. Otherwise there is a chance they quickly fall to the bottom of the fermenter. Rousing generally requires the ability to drop out yeast and trub, or transferring to a purged vessel for dry hopping. I have not taken that step myself.

I have also found that steps needed to cool crash and dry hop at cooler temps adds several more days to the fermentation process. I am not in a huge rush, but it ties up my fermentation chamber and makes it difficult to brew on a every other weekend schedule. I will continue to play with different techniques, but I have gotten my best dry hop flavors in an American IPA dry hopping for 2 days at fermentation temps (around 72F to finish) then cold crashing. Though note, this is just a 0.8 oz per gallon dry hopping rate and not in an NEIPA.

It may depend a bit on your goals. What hop flavors you enjoy and how intense of hop character you want. The post from @secretlevel (New England IPA - "Northeast" style IPA) is interesting. All 3 of these beer placed in a competition. There were differences in the beers, and people had preferences. It could be that preference would shift with the beer at 1 week vs 2 weeks vs 4 weeks.
 
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