sediment in NEIPAs

Personally, I think one should twist, shake, and disturb the MurkBombs, then set 'em back in the fridge upside down, for a couple minutes. Invert and pour. Since there are no hard and fast rules about these brews, the consumer should do their best to recreate the "fresh" experience. Yeast, particulates, and associated detritus are part of the experience.

 

With recently purchased cans I usually roll them before opening. I decant everything though, except for Firestone Walker and Carton, as I have never seen any sediment at bottom of any of their hoppy beers.

Excess yeast can be a problem for some people with candida bio films and adding more yeast to the situation isn't a health benefit.

 

Emphasis above mine. To each their own, but in my very limited experience, a decanted Hefeweizen has a more vibrant flavor. Pouring the entire bottle mutes the flavor a bit.

 

We should have degrees of cloudiness for hefe's, that way we can have a hemidemisemihefeweizen in between kristalweizen and hefeweizen

 

Oh, definitely. And I think most people want that clove phenol muted a bit, so they have no problem with doing so. Or they just don't think about it too much and do what they think they're supposed to do.

Either way. I don't believe that yeast does any favors for any style, hefeweizen, Belgian, etc, precisely because of the way it mutes and dulls the flavors.

 

I've never liked what lees add to the beer. At least with hefeweizen the yeast isn't astringent. You pour the yeast plus protein-polyphenol complexes of an NEIPA back into the beer and it absolutely ruins the beer with astringency and yeast bite.

 

Grimm here in NYC advises that one should gently roll the cans of their hoppy offerings before pouring to re-suspend some of the settled material to get the full experience of the beer. I can say, anecdotally, that doing so makes the beer taste better as compared to not rolling the can. I will also say that the material very rarely includes yeast -- seems to be mostly polyphenols. @Grimm_Artisanal_Ales, correct me if I misinterpreted you here!

 

What I do is really quite simple. I buy the beers in an amount that I can finish in 2 drinking days.

Having to roll or invert beer is one of the more ridiculous things I've heard.

 

Hmm, is there another crowdsourced definition of a new beer style thread in the near future?

Cheers!

 

Nothing like a good morning tongue twister. haha

 

you have it right. Here's the way we think about it. There are two kinds of haze that you might find in an IPA. Yeast haze (negative impact for flavor) and hop/grain polyphenol complexes from dry hopping (positive impact for flavor). We work hard to keep the former kind of haze out of the can. The latter kind of haze, however, appears to be a carrier of good flavor compounds like myrcene. And, it gradually falls out of suspension over a couple of weeks of cold storage. Rolling the can, or swirling the bottom and adding it a la hefeweizen, improves the flavor because it puts those compounds back into suspension.

Of course, we only recommend doing so because we have such a high degree of confidence that when you roll our can, you are NOT going to end up imbibing a bunch of yeast.

Depending on the process used at any particular brewery, if there's a lot of yeast biomass left in the can, then you would get a WORSE result from rolling the can, and you would be better off decanting carefully. So it's a case by case basis and has a lot to do with how quickly the brewery turns its tanks around, whether they centrifuge, etc.

 

Can you share with us how you're doing that? Membrane filtration?

 

yeast is heavier than the polyphenol complexes related to dry hopping. so it's a matter of cold crashing long enough to get the yeast to flocculate, but not so long as to crash the hop haze. In practice, hop haze takes a good couple of weeks to drop, while yeast will be well flocculated in a week or less. So the really bad NEIPA comes from producers who cold crash for a really shortened period of time (chasing the hazy appearance desired by consumers) and serve you an overly yeasty beer as a result.

 

Is it possible to operate the centrifuge such that the yeast is removed but the protein-polyphenol complexes remain in the beer?

Cheers!

 

Yeah, the majority of the time that I take the last swig from the can it's coarse and loaded with astringency and I'm thankful that I held off on pouring it.

I'll add the disclaimer that I've only had the Grimm IPAs on draught, never from a can, but based on how refined their beers tend to be I'm sure that they are one of the exceptions where you could feel free to pour the whole thing.

 

yes, light centrifugation will pretty much achieve this. the yeast is the largest particle in the beer (aside from vegetable hop matter which you definitely do not want in the beer) and therefore the first thing to drop out via centrifuge or good old fashioned time and temperature.

 

What is your production schedule for your Hazy/Hoppy beers? Maybe one week for fermentation/dry-hopping and another week for the yeast cold crash process? Would you then package (can) after those two weeks? Do you have personal preference for when to consume the canned beer? Do you like it right away or do you prefer another 1-2 weeks of can 'aging' before drinking?

Cheers!