Help with my NEIPA

How quickly do you think that hop flavors fade? How much oxygen do you think is picked up with homebrew bottle conditioning? How quickly will these beers be drank?

At my last brewery, we used a Meheen bottle filler. Those fillers are regularly tested north of 300 ppb oxygen pick up even on good filling days. Tasting panels were never able to reliably distinguish 2 week old beer from fresh beer. At 4 weeks, differences were found to be much more significant. Be careful with packaging and drink the beer fresh and these problems your citing shouldn't be an issue and then you can achieve a different mouthfeel that many people find pleasant. Now do you understand why there is a debate?

 

What was your oxygen pickup in kegs? And what did a month old keg of IPA taste like vs a month old bottle of your IPA?

 

Well. We all have opinions about things, and this thread is full of a lot of them and getting kind of funny on account of that.
I recommend doing whatever works for what you have. There are no hard fast rules. THere's only success. Failure. and that huge space in the middle where you know it could be better. If that means you want to go the extra mile and keg it off because that's what floats your boat, and you have the space. Money, and equipment for it. Bully for you. If not. It doesn't matter. Do recall that all of this juicy back and forth is over a style that is meant to be consumed as fresh as possible.

 

At a month, it was quite different. At 2 weeks, no differences were found. Results at 3 weeks were inconclusive in large part due to not conducting the tests with enough frequency, but based on what we saw, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of tasters would not have known a difference. We also did hot vs. cold storage and on our best bottling days we could be under 150 ppb with that filler. 3 days at 100 degrees with the bottle shaken the whole time with a paint shaker was the point when differences were found. That should equal roughly 90 days at 65 degrees sitting still.

 

Not a NEIPA, but I have a recent IPA/Hoppy Amber data point. I'm currently stretching a Munich/Mosaic SMaSH keg (originally fermented in conical with spunding valve, closed transferred to dry hop keg, closed transferred again to serving keg) past 5 months. Subjectively, I think it has lost about 10% of its original hop flavor/aroma. Another BA (who has also been sampling periodically) had a pint Friday and said something to the effect that it hasn't really lost anything. Of course, without a controlled test, I can't say our impressions are perfect, but there's something to it.

I can't say I've noticed a fuller mouthfeel with bottle conditioning. But I have noticed finer bubbles for a bottled beer that has finished carbonating vs. a fast force carb'd beer at the point full carbonation is reached. But more time results in finer bubbles in the keg also, which I attribute to hydration of the CO2. It would be interesting to A/B a bottle carb'd beer to a kegged beer from the same fermentation at, say, the 4 week mark and compare bubbles.

 

The bottles were filled with carbonated beer or primed beer? Into CO2 purged bottles?

It took me about 2 months to finish my last batch of NE DIPA.

I have never had an issue with kegged NEIPA for the duration of the batch. I have had issues when bottling batches of NEIPA at about two weeks where hops fell off significantly.

 

This was also something discussed in school actually on that same day. The teacher expressed discuss in American breweries that carbonate kegs minutes before serving because the bubbles were too large and the head retention can't be good as a result. It was a very funny moment of the stereotypical German brewer hating on American brewers.

 

How long was that beer @ roomtemp (or higher)...I didn't think so ...I can't say most of my IPAs last 5 months due to my consumption habits , but I think they would be fine.

 

Carbonated beer, capping on foam, into bottles with a double pre-evac. The argument here is not all about longevity of the beer. If the beer is going to be drank with in a month, I'm all in on bottle conditioned, or naturally carbonated kegged beer, either one being likely to be just as good as the other by the end of consumption. If we're talking about 2-3 months, I'd say drink faster! But in all seriousness, it all comes down to the amount of oxygen pick up. I don't know what that level is, but if you're going straight from fermenter into bottles, I can't imagine it being above 200-250 ppb and I'd think you could get it significantly lower than that with some effort. If you're going into a bottling bucket, yeah it could be worse because then you have two transfers. Kegging is easier, but I will maintain that it is not better with the caveat that the bottles need to be done well.

 

It was refrigerated after the last transfer. Just like a lot of people do with their bottle conditioned IPAs after carbonating. Cold doesn't stop oxidation, but it does slow it down.

As a rule of thumb, I've read that the rate is roughly doubled for each 10C increase in temperature.

 

Not a handicap when my beer won. Why drop a few hundred dollars on some shit you don't need? Fwiw my beer is 3 months old, has been sitting at room temp since bottling day, and tastes fine. Your opinion is just that, but until you have some cold hard science behind it I recommend letting it lie really, especially when there are plenty of folks on this board who make great beer without closed co2 transfers.

 

Kegging is less risk of O2 pickup.

I'd argue that if it wasn't for market demand and economy, most all breweries would prefer to serve their hoppy beers on draft. Jut from a quality standpoint.

I've had better success with kegging. I prefer the less risk and better tasting NEIPA at one month. I will continue to advocate against bottle conditioning and/or bottling NEIPA if you can help it.

 

Agree, wholeheartedly ...although closed xfer is not that expensive if you are kegging already...just a lot more work for minimal results.

 

That's great. Repeat that 10x and see if results don't differ.

All about risk.

I would bet I could keg 10 batches of NEIPA and all them taste fine at 1-2 months.

I would also bet I could bottle (w/ CP filler) the same 10 batches of NEIPA and at least 3-4 of those batches be negatively impacted at 1-2 months.

That is my experience.

 

@SFACRKnight I don't think anyone is saying award winning beer can't be made with simple/inexpensive methods. A valid subject for debate though is...can it be better, all else being equal, using other methods? What are the best practices? And how good is good enough?

It's a fact that most pro brewers go to lengths beyond what most home brewers do to limit O2. Should home brewers emulate those aspects? I do, and FWIW I was making BOS round medal winners (open transfer kegged) before I started down the closed transfer path. I'm convinced my hop flavor/aroma lasts longer now, in agreement with theory. So for me, marginal improvement is worth the cost.

 

I wouldn't prefer to do that. We invested a lot of money into a canning line that has been tested as 25 ppb total DO pick up. We will be naturally carbonating as I described in a previous post for most of the co2 for the purpose of the enhanced mouthfeel. Kegs typically measure anywhere from 5-15 ppb DO, so 25 is really nothing in comparison and we use our tanks as unitanks so we don't risk oxygen pick up from transfers. Then we have the advantage of ease of portability for cans vs kegs and that is a benefit that I value highly.

Again though, you're bringing up commercial brewing ideologies. Personally as a homebrewer and as a commercial brewer, I want to make the best beer possible. For me that means natural carbonation for the mouthfeel I'm going for. If the drawback is a decreased freshness life, so be it. I'll get our beers sold in two weeks or in the case of homebrewing, me and my friends will drink it in two weeks. Especially at home, I would rather have perfect beer for 2 weeks and then drinkable, but not great beer for the rest of the time it takes to drink than to have really good beer the same amount of time that never reached perfection. Again to answer your question of why the argument exists, that is exactly why it exists. It's not semantics, it's just what you value and decide to trade-off.

 

To each his own. Just trying to guide the OP to the least risk and most chance of success of making a NEIPA. It will be up to him and whoever else reads this to decide what is best for them. Trade offs exist on each side & I think they have been discussed rather in depth here.

 

You should realize as a commercial brewer that hand capping is a significantly different beast than capping at the commercial level. I've never sent over a case worth of bottles flying violently while a bottle shatters because I missed the timing bottling homebrew and row 4 double capped, or capped off center. Have you?

Kegging has a myriad of its own issues that do not always mean what you serve is ideal. Market demand is market demand. That has not point in this discussion about homebrew.
I'd personally like a lot of things from a quality standpoint. I can't afford them, so I make do and design within my limits. It makes my beer better.
Meow.

 

...but dirty bottles yield fine beer?

 

It is very intriguing the level of discussion post the comment of: "Not even worth arguing. If you want to go make bottle conditioned NEIPA, go do it."

Cheers!