Brewed my first NEIPA last Saturday - 6.5 gallons of 1.064 OG into the fermenter - pitched a pouch of Imperial A38 at 66 F and set the controller to 69 F and walked away. 7-hour lag and it was off to the races. 2 days in I noticed the bubbling had slowed down so I added the first dry-hop charge of 4 oz and it took off once again and blew out the blow-off tube and muddied the water in the blow-off bucket.
Later that day the bubbling had slowed to a crawl so I assumed that it was near the end of fermentation (ridiculous assumption - no gravity check, just watching bubbles in the bucket!) so I blasted it again with the second dry-hop charge of 4 oz thinking I wanted to get the hops in there during active fermentation to take advantage of biotransformation and to scrub any O2 introduced during the hop addition.
So on day 2 of active fermentation I hit it with a whopping 8 oz of hop pellets over a 12-hour period! Activity slowed to a crawl from that point and has been chugging away since. On Thursday I grabbed a sample and took a gravity reading - 1.021 SG. The sample formed a fresh head of krausen a short while later so it is still active. This morning I checked it again and it is sitting between 1.019 and 1.018 so I know is it still chugging away albeit very slowly.
My concern is that the still fementing beer is going to be sitting on the dry-hops for as long as it takes to finish. I normally do 2-3 days of consistent SG measurements before I start the crash. If I'm seeing a 2-3 point drop over a 2-day period and it is presumably slowing down as it nears the end, I can assume (and I've seen this before in other styles) that I'll get about a point a day. My expected FG is 1.014 so, presumably, I have 4 days to go before I start that 2-3 day consistent SG reading thing. This puts me at least 6 more days out before I can start the crash. The hops have been in there since the 11th so they've been in contact for 5 days now. I can go 8 or 9 days before my comfort level has hit its limit on hop contact time, especially with that amount of dry-hops. 6 more days will put me at 11 days hop contact time!
Seeing as what's done is done, and I'm bound to wait until the beer is truly finished before crashing, should I expect anything "off" from the extended hop contact time?
And for the $64,000 question; with this yeast (one pouch of A38 in particular, not just LAIII in general assuming there could be differences in processing between yeast companies) should I have waited until gravity was much closer to terminal before adding the dry hops, say, 1.020? Seems conceivable I could have added the hops in a "too much, too soon" manner and stunted the fermentation. Should I be letting the yeast do a bit more work before challenging them with massive amounts of hops?
Later that day the bubbling had slowed to a crawl so I assumed that it was near the end of fermentation (ridiculous assumption - no gravity check, just watching bubbles in the bucket!) so I blasted it again with the second dry-hop charge of 4 oz thinking I wanted to get the hops in there during active fermentation to take advantage of biotransformation and to scrub any O2 introduced during the hop addition.
So on day 2 of active fermentation I hit it with a whopping 8 oz of hop pellets over a 12-hour period! Activity slowed to a crawl from that point and has been chugging away since. On Thursday I grabbed a sample and took a gravity reading - 1.021 SG. The sample formed a fresh head of krausen a short while later so it is still active. This morning I checked it again and it is sitting between 1.019 and 1.018 so I know is it still chugging away albeit very slowly.
My concern is that the still fementing beer is going to be sitting on the dry-hops for as long as it takes to finish. I normally do 2-3 days of consistent SG measurements before I start the crash. If I'm seeing a 2-3 point drop over a 2-day period and it is presumably slowing down as it nears the end, I can assume (and I've seen this before in other styles) that I'll get about a point a day. My expected FG is 1.014 so, presumably, I have 4 days to go before I start that 2-3 day consistent SG reading thing. This puts me at least 6 more days out before I can start the crash. The hops have been in there since the 11th so they've been in contact for 5 days now. I can go 8 or 9 days before my comfort level has hit its limit on hop contact time, especially with that amount of dry-hops. 6 more days will put me at 11 days hop contact time!
Seeing as what's done is done, and I'm bound to wait until the beer is truly finished before crashing, should I expect anything "off" from the extended hop contact time?
And for the $64,000 question; with this yeast (one pouch of A38 in particular, not just LAIII in general assuming there could be differences in processing between yeast companies) should I have waited until gravity was much closer to terminal before adding the dry hops, say, 1.020? Seems conceivable I could have added the hops in a "too much, too soon" manner and stunted the fermentation. Should I be letting the yeast do a bit more work before challenging them with massive amounts of hops?
