Northeast Pales/IPA/DIPA

Shane.

London 3 is like no other yeast I've seen. Even moderate (to me) hopping levels makes this yeast stay in suspension like I've never seen. Flaked grains no matter how many you add can throw a haze like this.

 

This is my dry hop after 5 days of fermentation with a nice (over) pitch of London 3. This krauesen will not drop. I was actually a little worried. The krauesen looks like a brown Meringue. 2 or 3 inches thick. It refuses to drop. After asking my friend what the hell is happening here?? He said don't worry. His London 3 krausens never actually drop without help.

I wanna blend this yeast with sach trois so baddddddd.


That was a 6 oz dry hop in a 1.048 OG beer.

 

I had to punch those hops down thru that krausen with a sanitized spoon end.

 

Shhhh.... If Todd hears talk of cloudy beer that tastes good he'll shut us all down.

 

I would guess that almost all heavily hopped commercial IPAs are cloudy unless the brewer does something to clarify them. Ours are hazy until we filter them, though a month of cold storage will clear them pretty well. My main thought on the trend of more hazy IPAs is just that a lot of newer brewers don't want to clarify their beers. I don't think this has anything to do with how good the beers are. Yeast especially isn't adding anything positive to hop aroma or flavor. I actually find it pretty detrimental to hop flavor as it makes it coarse and muddy. A more flocculent yeast that gets out of the way quickly should be better for hop aroma.

 

I really don't understand the desire to make a hoppy beer as hazy as possible. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

 

It's definitely possible to make a juicy hop bomb without it looking like a cup of gravy.

 

I agree with you but there is something special with these hazy NE hoppy beers. The thick haze makes the beer look and taste like a glass full of fruit juice. And the mouthfeel.

I'll take a hoppy beer from Tired Hands over Pliny any day. And Pliny....is Pliny!!

 

What @hoptualBrew said.

 

These brewers are in my backyard and I love them. I also enjoy a nice clear beer, even an IPA. In the end I think it's worth making beers like this and I think it's worth striving for clarity on others.

 

We use a very flocculant strain!

 

Fair enough and good to know. Of the new school New England IPAs, the only yeasts I know for sure are slow dropping and of British descent. Good to know that at least Trillium is taking another route.

 

I've had two HF beers, but neither of them were hoppy. Haven't had any of the others.

I get it. The NW beers you are referring to taste like juice. My point is, you don't need a beer to look like a cup of gravy in order for it to taste like juice.

 

The short answer...it's all important, you need to focus on every aspect to arrive at the intended beer.

Re: unmalted/raw/flaked adjunct...we don't use that in every hop forward beer. Actually, a relatively small % of our hop forward beers contain them.

 

The haze in those beers is due to high %'s of flaked grains and a medium-low flocculating yeast strain, fining with gelatin or biofine doesn't seem to help much. I know some people don't like the cloudy nature of beers like HopHands etc, but its a necessary "evil" to achieve the silky smooth mouthfeel that balances the very low bittering levels of these beers, also a 1:1 Sulfate:Chloride is important.

Whats not been mentioned is London 3's ester profile plays well with the huge hop aroma. To me thats one of the most important factors. Conan and even S-04 achieve something similar but London 3 dominates imo.

Also, I think HopHands is (or was bc I think its a little different now) closer to %15-18 Flaked Oats. The clone recipes linked by @psnydez86 above are from my blog. Thanks for the shout out dude.