Does hop aroma escape during bottling?

From what I have read a lot of people say their Ipa's improve once they start kegging. You can purge the keg of oxygen before the transfer which helps and you are able to start drinking it sooner than if you bottled. You can also dry hop in the keg. I bottle the same way you do and my Ipa's have a good aroma for the first few weeks and then it starts to fall off quick. I tend to drink my Ipa's sooner than later because of this.

 

Sure... anything you are smelling is no longer in your beer. But the bigger issue I think is this... Oxidation changes and diminishes hop flavor and aroma. My IPAs began to retain their hop flavor and aroma much longer once I started kegging and therefore controlling exposure to oxygen. I don't know of a practical way to bottle from a fermenter or bottling bucket that would eliminate oxygen pickup.

 

I bottle, and I get fine aroma on my IPAs*. I think drinking them as soon as they are ready is key. I don't do secondary either, and most of my IPAs are only in the fermenter a couple weeks or so (never less than two weeks tho). I think this gives me lots of viable yeast, which makes them carbonate in the bottle quickly, and lets me drink them sooner, giving them better aroma and flavor. That's my theory, at least.

*I do realize it's likely to be "even better" once I start kegging, but alas, for now I remain a bottler.

 

Bottle conditioning necessarily leaves oxygen in the bottle (the head space). This oxygen is the real culprit in reducing the amount of hop aroma in homebrew. The advantage of kegging is that your a force carbonating and you don't leave any oxygen (no head space). The minimal amount of time bottling might be contributing, but I don't think it's the biggest problem.

On bottling lines, professional brewers purge their bottles before they transfer their beer. The bottles are pressurized and then they cap on top of foam. The CO2 foam nearly "guarantees" an absence of oxygen in the bottle. This suggests that the oxygen in this step is important, or at least important enough to think about. A professional brewer is obviously much more concerned about shelf-life, however, so this might just be covering all of the bases. As beer enters bottles, from the bottom to the top, without splashing, it pushes all of the oxygen out. If it splashes around, it may be incorporating more oxygen. As long as your bottling technique and your transfer from primary to secondary avoids splashing, you are probably doing as much as you can do.

And if you are interested in CO2 purging bottles, the key is to do 4 or 6 at a time and to place a cap on top of the bottle after you purge it. Then, go back and fill it with beer and crimp the cap on.

Hope that helps.

 

Assuming you mean 'too much' money rather than too much space, used chest freezers can be had dirt cheap from Craigslist, yard sales, etc.

 

Commercial breweries take great steps to minimize dissolved oxygen in their packaged beers (bottles or cans). Things are a bit different with respect to homebrewing since the beers are bottle conditioned. The yeast will consume some (most?) of the dissolved oxygen in the bottled beer as part of the secondary fermentation process.

AlCaponeJunior stated: “I bottle, and I get fine aroma on my IPAs” I too bottle my beers and my IPAs always have a great aroma. In fact, I made an all Citra hopped IPA a couple of years ago where I dry hopped with 1.5 oz. of Citra hops. After two weeks of bottle conditioning I tried my first bottle of that batch. The aroma (and flavor) that came out of the glass of beer was overwhelming! I actually aged that batch another 2+ weeks before drinking another bottle to permit the hop flavor/aroma to mellow out. That beer was an enjoyable beer to drink at that timeframe.

I am not sure exactly what issues the OP is having with his bottled IPA. Maybe too much splashing (or some other source of aeration) during his bottling process? There really is no reason that you can’t obtain good (or even overwhelming) hop aroma when bottling IPAs.

Cheers!