Hi everyone It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. Partly that’s because I’ve been brewing less and that is partly because I have had a persistent weird brewing dilemma. To put it simply, by the time my nice hoppy IPAs have conditioned in bottles for two weeks the hop character is gone. Gone! I have dry hopped, increased the hop volumes, used new hop pellets, paid attention to various aspects of the brew, and nothing. Basically, I have a nice IPA base, but the hops fade quickly I don’t want to make a long post, but I will include the basic recipe here. It changes slightly each time but here are the basics: For 3 Gallons: 6lb cdn two row 8oz 60L crystal 4oz carafoam. Hop schedule: .5 oz Simcoe in the boil (60 min) 1.25 simcoe at 15 min 1.25 Simcoe at 1 min Dry hop with .5oz simcoe and 1 oz citra after about a week. Bottle after two weeks Additional items: I used burton salts in the mash and sparse water (which would otherwise just be RO water) and 1/2 Tbsp Irish moss at 10 min. I switch up the hops depending on what I want to do, but I had bought a lb of Simcoe and wanted to feature this one because I like Simcoe. the Citra was there just for a little variety. When I put it into the bottles it was very tasty, and had a nice nose. But now it’s fairly bland. Any ideas?
How is the carbonation level? Wondering if a bad seal could/would affect the hop character that quickly?
That's a good question and observation! Carbonation has been pretty decent. I did get a new bottle capper which seems to be a little more finicky than before and at times I'm not convinced the caps were on as well as before (and I had this problem with my old capper) but so far I have not noticed a lack of carbonation
Kegging is the answer! I have been brewing for over 30 years, mainly IPAs, and had the same problem. They tasted great at bottling, but by the time they were ready to drink, they lost a lot of the hop character. Two years ago, I finally set up a kegging system and it is a game changer. In my opinion, my beers taste better than anything I can buy. I know it seems like a big investment, but if you do it, you will never regret it. I now feel that I wasted 28 years making inferior beer and wish I started kegging sooner.
Thanks. The beers I used to brew that were very nice and hoppy were also bottled. So although I see this as a potential way to moderate the loss of hop character in the future, I suspect it does not solve the fundamental problem.
I bottle my IPAs and they have very vibrant hop aroma after carbonation is complete (couple of weeks after bottling). Those IPAs hold the hop aroma for several weeks after carbonating but after a couple of months they do have a decreased level of hop aroma as compared to prior drinking. This is the same effect for commercially brewed IPAs, after 2-3 months from packaging the hop aroma fades. Has anything changed in your bottling process? Do you by any chance use an auto-siphon for racking the beer into the bottling buckets? Cheers!
That is very odd. I have never had that happen that fast with my bottled beers. It is also something that is hard to determine the cause.
If your hop flavor/aroma is spot on at bottling time and gone two weeks later, that's oxidation. If you want to maintain hop flavor and aroma for as long as possible, the answer is spunding valve (vice airlock) fermentations, dry hopping without introducing O2, and closed transfers to a purged keg. Absent the above, you can tweak your process to reduce added O2. It won't be ideal, but it can be better. It would probably help if you could describe your equipment and process from start to finish, or at least starting when the wort goes into the fermenter.
I stopped brewing hoppy beers a couple of years before I stopped brewing altogether because I knew that the thing that was holding them back was taking the leap into kegging and the deep dive into oxygen purging (fermenting under pressure, forced transfers, spunding valves, etc.) Your opinion of your brews has probably changed over time by being more exposed to better brewed commercial beers, or other homebrewers who have taken up these practices. Good news is that you can still brew excellent malt and yeast forward beers like stouts/porters, Scottish ales, and various Belgian styles.
Thanks, this is useful. My process is pretty simple and low tech. I’m guessing since O2 is removed in the boil, it’s the post boil process you think I should mention, so here goes. I have a 7 Gallon a stainless steel pot that came with a spigot and thermometer (they were part of the pot when I got it). I boil in the pot usually on a gas ring, chill with an immersion chiller (a DIY set of copper coils), then drain the pot with the spigot through a sanitized sieve into a 5 gallon glass carboy (this is for a 3.5 Gal batch). I shake it for a bit (well, rock it back and forth, it’s 3.5 gallons in glass!) then add the yeast starter. I don’t decant the starter. I have a regular every day airlock into which I put vodka as the liquid. Ferment for a few weeks. I usually let it go longer than I need to. In the last version, it was 3 weeks. I have a freezer with a temperature controller so usually it ferments between 65 and 68F I rack it to a plastic bottling bucket using an auto siphon. I bottle with a bottling wand. Throughout this process it’s with sanitized silicone tubing. all of my bottles have been sterilized by baking in an oven at 450 for an hour. Probably overkill but I hate having failed brews due to infections! As I write this I wonder if there is a problem putting the wort in a larger than necessary carboy. I have a couple three gallon glass carboys but they’d be full to the top.
Thanks. What you say about tastes changing is probably accurate. But I have all of these hops! I have to say I’m not a huge fan of darker malty beers (my gf loves them so I brew them for her) and also that my darker ales come out great! And I brewed a tripel recently that was really something else.
Bingo! I have read from other folks that their auto siphon would develop a 'leak' and air (oxygen) would get introduced to the beer during transfer. My recommendation is to get rid of that auto siphon and siphon the old fashioned way. Cheers!
Hot side aeration is also a thing. But controlling it is not nearly as important as cold side. The longer a finished the beer sits in an airlocked fermenter, the more O2 will be dissolved in the beer. ("Airlock" is kind of a misnomer.) Transferring to a bottling bucket will pick up O2, regardless of what kind of siphon you use. Without getting too high tech, you could try a fermenter that has a spigot to which a bottling wand can be attached. Of course, you'd need to dose the bottles with priming sugar directly. Carbonation Drops are a possibility. Also, when bottling, fill the bottle higher than normal, leaving less headspace, and thus less added O2 to dissolve into the beer. If you're going to continue using a bottling bucket, I'd recommend looking into adding Sodium Metabisulfite, which will react with O2, making it unavailable to oxidize the beer.
Hate to say I think vikeman & MrOh are right. Not because they're evil, I've no idea, but their suggestions are a big change IMO. For a while, I could bottle traditional and NEIPAs as good as the best commercial examples. Simple 1 & 2 gallon batches, little to no temp control and little to no water treatment. Then, after 5-6 delightful batches, that was it. Same as you, zero hop presence. Tried individually dosing bottles with priming sugar, controlling temp, water treatment and, yes, sometimes reading short stories to my fermenting beer. Still, same zero hop beers bar a here and there exception. Kegging and pressure fermentation, I bet, is the way to go. Good luck.
thanks everyone. So barring the investment in kegging gear, I understand what I need to do is as follows: Use a smaller keg when brewing smaller batches. Get a new auto siphon (Mine has been looking a little.. leaky) Maybe top the bottles up higher? I don’t know at what point O2 gets dissolved in beer. I thought that was only under pressure (when the air has nowhere else to go). the crazy thing is, nothing has changed in my process except that I brew smaller batches and put them in bigger carboys. But since CO2 is heavier than air, I figure once it starts fermenting there is no O2 touching the beer anyway
IMO, avoid a bottling bucket and use a spigot instead of a siphon whenever possible should be on that list. Also, avoid beer sittting in fermenter longer than necessary. Any time the wort/beer is in contact with air (or a headspace containing O2), O2 can dissolve into the wort/beer (assuming the wort/beer is not already holding as much O2 as it can under the conditions). There's no need for the air/headspace to be at a higher pressure than (say) atmospheric pressure. How fast the O2 dissolves depends on things like the surface area, the temperature, and the existing concentrations of O2 in the wort/beer. Also, during active fermentation the CO2 evolving tends to carry headspace O2 with it as the stream exits the airlock. This CO2 (and O2) stream exiting the airlock is what protects the beer during active fermentation. But once that stream is no longer being produced, O2 can fairly easily move in the other direction. First, it dissolves into the airlock liquid from the atmosphere, then it moves from the airlock liquid into the fermenter's headspace. Then it dissolves into the beer. Note that the airlock liquid surfaces are rather small, so O2 ingress rate through the airlock is relatively slow. But leaving the longer the finished beer sits in the fermenter, the more O2 is picked up (rate x time).
That’s really interesting about the O2 moving back through the airlock. I figured the CO2 is just a cushion on top off the beer. That’s what I’d read for many years. I can’t do the spigot because I have glass carboys. When it comes down to it, the main thing I have changed seems to be the size of my batches. And ironically I make smaller batches so I can refine my process before dealing with the big batches, yet here I have a process problem that may have been related to the size!
Also I wonder if my process of pouring the wort through a sieve into the carboy (to aerate) and then shaking it in the carboy might be aeration overkill?
This is right before you pitch the yeast? If so, this is OK since the yeast needs oxidation to multiply/ferment. Cheers! P.S. I still think your leaking auto siphon is the issue here.
The "CO2 Blanket" is mostly a myth, one that won't quite die. When O2 enters the headspace, it mixes freely via diffusion with whatever other gases are present. The molecules are flying around and bouncing off each other and the fermenter walls with a lot of energy. I say "mostly" a myth because the CO2 molecules do provide something for the O2 molecules to bounce off of, and some of those bounces will be "up," i.e. away from the beer (though the same O2 molecules can come back for another try). But imagine a billiard table (without pockets), with some white balls ("CO2") scattered over its surface. These white balls are constantly moving, bouncing off of each other and the sides of the table. Now introduce some red balls at one end of the table (the fermenter airlock/opening), also moving in random directions, bouncing off each other and any walls encountered. Before long, the red and white balls will be completely mixed, and each time a red ball reaches the opposite end of the table (the "beer"), it can be dissolved. Ultimately, the CO2 "blanket" does not protect the beer from O2. The barrier effect is very temporary, and any O2 that entered the headspace will ultimately reach the beer, being absorbed until the O2 dissolved in the beer is at equilibrium with the O2 remaining in the headspace. But, as the O2 dissolved in the beer is used up in oxidation reactions, that equilibrium shifts, and more of the headspace O2 is dissolved into the beer. Here's a cool demonstration of the way gases mix freely. It uses Br2, which is even heavier than CO2.
