Volatile NEIPAs - taste different when keg agitated

[ChaosB]

Last two batches I've brewed were NEIPA and I've been going crazy deciding if I like them or not because every time I taste them, they're different.

At first I thought this was just happening as they age. The first pour was great and then after a week there was significant loss to flavor and aroma.

With the first batch I noticed that it was also getting less hazy over time so I decided to shake the keg a bit and behold the Haze came back along with some flavor.

What's happening here? The first batch I did not suck up much yeast during pressure transfer. The second batch I definitely got kind of greedy and sucked up some yeast and also keg hopped the second batch.

So when I shake the keg with the second batch, there's definitely a sweet spot between when it was first agitated vs when it's sat for 3-4 days. Right after shaking, pours too much yeast and flavor is too harsh. Let it settle some and it tastes great. 3-4 days without shaking it and it loses flavor and just tastes kind of astringent maybe.

There's no loss of Haze on the second batch, it has nothing to do with yeast. 20% oats produced plenty of Haze.

Am I losing hop oils to proteins / yeast that are then settling out?

I've done everything I can think of to mitigate oxygen exposure. I dry hopped before pitching and didn't open the fermenter again until I swapped out airlocks with a balloon filled with co2 during cold crashing and pressure transferred to the keg.

Maybe I need to go back to using gelatin when I cold crash even for NEIPA.

I'd really love for my beer to taste the same on each pour.

 

[Franktalk]

To quote the Electric Light Orchestra, "It's a living thing." The things that you describe are absolutely correct, and you could say them about every or any beer. Except that NEIPAs are extreme when it comes to everything, so the changes that are observed are just as extreme as the flavors, aromas, clarity, etc. If you want consistency, either don't touch it or put it on a yeast plate and keep it spinning.

 

[ChaosB]

That's fair except there's plenty of commercial craft examples of the style that largely taste the same as long as they haven't been aged considerably. I don't see any reason I can't learn to yield similar consistency. Looking for the way.

 

[Jag75]

I dont have any issues with this that I know of . Maybe your pallet is more sophisticated then mine . I do have others that drink it and have never said anything though. I know that stuff does settle in a cold keg but it still should stay hazy . I use oats , wheat and white wheat . My NEIPA isnt chunky , its hazy . I guess it just depends on how hazy you like em.

 

[Dgallo]

You’re experiencing the affects of oxidation. A NEIPA should get better in a keg after 2 weeks not worse. If flavor and aroma drop and your color dulls or darkens, it’s 100% oxidation

Are you purging your kegs of o2 before your transfer? If not, when youre force carbing the beer, you are forcing the Initial headspace worth of o2 into the beer as well as co2

 

[Cavpilot2000]

What he (Dgallo) said.
Oxidation. Period.
I know there are still people who don't believe that oxygen is detrimental to beer, and it is especially so with highly hopped beers like NEIPA, but denying reality doesn't make it any less true.
And the harsh taste - like eating white pepper - is from hops particles you're stirring up when you agitate it.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

If it's happening after a week I'd agree with previous posters that oxidation could be an issue. However, beers do invariably evolve/change with time. The more pronounced the initial flavor the more you may notice it. I've actually seen hazy beers makers printing on the can that you should flip the can over briefly before opening. So even they are acutely aware that the delicate flavor components can settle out over time.

 

[Rob.smith]

In addition to what the others have said, check your CO2 levels. I had similar experiences with NEIPA flavors quickly progressing from harsh/green (young) to delicious to terrible within a couple of weeks. I went through many batches trying to figure out what was causing it and eventually stumbled upon the CO2 levels. Either too high or too low impacted the delicate flavors. Everything needs to be in balance for this style to shine. Good luck!

 

[ChaosB]

You’re experiencing the affects of oxidation. A NEIPA should get better in a keg after 2 weeks not worse. If flavor and aroma drop and your color dulls or darkens, it’s 100% oxidation

Are you purging your kegs of o2 before your transfer? If not, when youre force carbing the beer, you are forcing the Initial headspace worth of o2 into the beer as well as co2

Yes I purge the keg. I'm not noticing color darkening. I stopped force carbonating at high PSI so I would no longer have to purge the keg to serving pressure and lose all that aroma. I got a lid with a carb stone.

I don't know how to limit oxygen exposure anymore than I already am short of fermenting under pressure in the keg or getting a fermzilla or other unitank conical.

As for co2, I've found that I like my beer at 37 F and 11 PSI. what would you recommend for this style?

Last batch was on a 2:3 sulfate to chloride ratio (130 / 180) which I upped from 1:2 to attempt to bring out more Hop character. I started using Bru'n Water instead of beer Smith for water chemistry.

That's a good point about rolling cans. Maybe it is mostly oxygen but there's definitely something else going on when I can regain some flavor by shaking the keg.

 

[Dgallo]

Yes I purge the keg. I'm not noticing color darkening. I stopped force carbonating at high PSI so I would no longer have to purge the keg to serving pressure and lose all that aroma. I got a lid with a carb stone.

I don't know how to limit oxygen exposure anymore than I already am short of fermenting under pressure in the keg or getting a fermzilla or other unitank conical.

As for co2, I've found that I like my beer at 37 F and 11 PSI. what would you recommend for this style?

Last batch was on a 2:3 sulfate to chloride ratio (130 / 180) which I upped from 1:2 to attempt to bring out more Hop character. I started using Bru'n Water instead of beer Smith for water chemistry.

That's a good point about rolling cans. Maybe it is mostly oxygen but there's definitely something else going on when I can regain some flavor by shaking the keg.

The way you’re describing the flavor/aroma change sounds like oxidation but your practices seem sound to me.

Are you dryhopping with fresh hops or bags that were already opens?

 

[ChaosB]

The way you’re describing the flavor/aroma change sounds like oxidation but your practices seem sound to me.

Are you dryhopping with fresh hops or bags that were already opens?

Dry pellet hops that are vacuum sealed and stored in the freezer. They sit out in oxygen after I weigh them the morning of brew day but I actually think I'm going to change this process by weighing them the night before and re sealing in individual packs for each addition, to save time on brew day and then only cut the bag open as I'm adding it to the pot.

 

[vtipsy]

Am I losing hop oils to proteins / yeast that are then settling out?

Yeah definitely. Go into a store and look at a bottle of hoppy beer that has sat there for a while. There's often a hoppy sediment at the bottom. Some bars store their kegs of NEIPA upside down so when they put it on tap all that stuff gets resuspended.

I use the clear beer draught system instead of a dip tube so that beer is drawn from the top of the keg. The last pint is almost always tastier than the first one.

I had a hoppy PA with a boat load of rye that tasted amazing for a couple days after I shook the keg then dropped of again. I just kept shaking it.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

With the first batch I noticed that it was also getting less hazy over time so I decided to shake the keg a bit and behold the Haze came back along with some flavor.

The purists will say that if your NEIPAs start to drop clear you don't know how to make an NEIPA and you are a bad person. I had a few extract based NEIPA batches that I brewed mostly to test some hop combos. After 3 or 4 weeks in the keg they started to drop much of the haze and the flavor was fading. I gave swirling the kegs a try and much of the flavor (and haze) returned. These were beers that were cold crashed (with balloons to prevent suckback), closed transferred into a keg with an inline filter to prevent hop matter. There was not a lot of crud in the kegs.

In my book, if you like the way your NEIPA tastes after swirling the keg, then go ahead and swirl.

I have an all-grain batch of NEIPA in the keg now (for 1 week so far). This one seems to tick off all the techniques that promote haze and hop flavor (% of wheat and oats, 6 oz of whirlpool hops, double dry hopped with 6 oz of dry hop, London Ale III). I am curious if this will keep the haze and flavor.

 

[couchsending]

If you do things correctly your beer really shouldn’t change that much in a keg if stored cold for even 3 months.

What’s your process purging your keg? Are you lines purged as well?

dry hopping before you pitch yeast? And that’s it? If that’s the case then you are losing so many of the hops volatile flavors and aromas during fermentation through Co2 blow off and also those oils coating the yeast and getting pulled down with the yeast when it floccs.

If you must dry hop during fermentation wait until the very very tail end of fermentation. Their is still some Co2 production and after you drop the hops in you’ll get even more Co2 coming out of solution and probably some additional fermentation so all almost all of your O2 will be pushed out of the airlock.

 

[Cavpilot2000]

People have really jumped the shark on the whole haze thing (which has now become a quest for murky and opaque, not just hazy like the progenitors of the style (Alchemist, Treehouse, Hill) showed.
The haze is a byproduct, not a goal. Or at least it should be. You get people adding flour and other ridiculous adjuncts for no purpose that helps the beer flavor-wise (and some hurt it), but only for a look.
Look at the beers that started the style, people - they were HAZY, NOT OPAQUE. And the brewers didn't do anything special to make the haze, they just made their beer and it turned out hazy. And you know what? Heady and Julius and all those do drop clear after a few months - that's what beer does!
If all you care about is your haze, you're putting form over function and an aesthetic over flavor.
Rant off.

 

[jturman35]

People have really jumped the shark on the whole haze thing (which has now become a quest for murky and opaque, not just hazy like the progenitors of the style (Alchemist, Treehouse, Hill) showed.
The haze is a byproduct, not a goal. Or at least it should be. You get people adding flour and other ridiculous adjuncts for no purpose that helps the beer flavor-wise (and some hurt it), but only for a look.
Look at the beers that started the style, people - they were HAZY, NOT OPAQUE. And the brewers didn't do anything special to make the haze, they just made their beer and it turned out hazy. And you know what? Heady and Julius and all those do drop clear after a few months - that's what beer does!
If all you care about is your haze, you're putting form over function and an aesthetic over flavor.
Rant off.

The OP wasn’t really talking about the appearance as much as the overall flavor dropping off after only a week or two. I never will understand why people feel the need to crap all over a certain style? I never really cared for sour beers, yet I don’t go around looking for reasons to bash sours. I just tell folks I haven’t found the perfect sour.

 

[Cavpilot2000]

The OP wasn’t really talking about the appearance as much as the overall flavor dropping off after only a week or two. I never will understand why people feel the need to crap all over a certain style? I never really cared for sour beers, yet I don’t go around looking for reasons to bash sours. I just tell folks I haven’t found the perfect sour.

I know what the OP was getting at, but the discussion seemed to turn to NEIPAs dropping clear and how some consider that a bad thing.
And I don’t think anybody here was crapping in the style, are they? I’m certainly not - I love a good NEIPA (too bad the multitude being brewed today are only mediocre), I’m only crapping on people focusing on making their beer opaque rather than focusing on making it taste great and letting the haze be a byproduct like it was for the examples that started the style.

 

[jturman35]

Sorry guy, guess I misread your post above. This style catches a lot of hate for some reason. I agree there are also a lot of poor commercial examples. This is definitely a style that is harder to brew than others. I agree with you about having to add flour, and cringe when I see lactose.


Cheers!

 

[vtipsy]

Plenty of people like their beers crystal clear. Form over function? Relax, stop tilting at windmills.