Thoughts on avoiding hop creep in NEIPA

I personally have never experienced hop creep but my ‘vote’ would be for your option 4 below:

“Option 4 – Dry hop during your diacetyl rest. Instead of trying to fight the enzymes, why not try to work with them? Dry hop at diacetyl rest temperatures and when the beer has about 2-3 Plato of gravity shift to go before final gravity. Don’t forget how wort and beer pH can effect yeast’s ability to clean up diacetyl so make sure you have your formulations and ability to measure pH accurately in place. You will also need to adjust your recipe’s Original Gravity to counter the extra alcohol from the higher attenuation. Give your beer a good 3-4 days of free rise after dry hop to clean up any diacetyl.”

https://www.rockstarbrewer.com/how-...n-beer-and-how-brewers-can-minimise-the-risk/

Cheers!

 

I think your best bet is option 3. Part of your off flavor issue could be coming the large amount of dry hops in the keg. Just a guess as I have never used that much at once. NEIPAs are usually dry hopped twice anyway. The first dry hop towards the end of active fermentation (on yeast cake) will result in biotransformation of the hop oils. This is kind critical for the NEIPA style.

Also, why are you adding biofine to a NEIPA? You want the haze. Good luck.

 

I have experienced diacetyl in a couple dry hopped beers lately. Is it hop creep? Don't know. To fix it, I pitched some U-05, in starter wort and given some time to reach high krausen. I pitched it into the warm kegs of the offending beers, gave them a week or two, and things got better. So that is the reactive plan. What's the proactive plan? I'm thinking something along the lines of krausening your kegs along with dry hopping them. Or pitching some priming sugar at the time of keg-hopping to give the yeast a boost. Haven't experimented with it yet, but basically, anything you do to encourage your yeast to keep on keeping could be worth investigating,

 

The additional difference is that option 4 suggests dry hopping before the beer has reached final gravity:

"Dry hop at diacetyl rest temperatures and when the beer has about 2-3 Plato of gravity shift to go before final gravity."

I really do not know how to comment here.

As I mentioned in my first post "I personally have never experienced hop creep" so I have zero experience in this matter.

The best suggestion I can provide is utilize your best judgement here. Every homebrewers has their own unique homebrewery so even if somebody would post "you should do x" does not necessarily mean that this would work for you in your homebrewery.

The other aspect to keep in mind is that whether a batch will experience hop creep is dependent on dry hopping amounts. In the article I linked the other option mentioned is:

"Option 5 – The more dry hop – the higher the concentration of enzyme that can potentially damage your beer. Consider the reducing returns on increasingly higher dry-hop rates on flavour and aroma and it’s added risk of more “Dry Hop Creep” occurring. Less is sometimes more in the brewing world."

Maybe use less hops for dry hopping?

Cheers!

 

No need for fining. Especially for a NEIPA. Kinda curious why you would. But I’ve only experienced diacetyl when the yeast has dropped out early then dry hopped anyway. Keeping up the temp and towards the end has been my fix.

 

Had crazy creep on my last batch.I'm going to try a few things like cold crashing before dry hopping in the keg because I think yeast are the problem and should be removed before the second dry hop.My last batch was a fruit bomb then i cooled and carbonated and the aroma went away. I have a feeling the oils dropped with the yeast.

 

@polkbar78 - yes to the Monkish tips ! In my opinion it doesn’t hurt to dry hop early, as long as you clear out your yeast before the final dry hop charge.

I would say do some small active fermentation dry hop charges - more is less, like 1 or 1.5oz only. Do multiples though. Once beer has reached FG, do a cold crash gently to somewhere near 40-45 F. That should be plenty and should minimize suck back. Key is getting the beer away from the yeast and hop trub ASAP.

Dry hop in the serving keg. You don’t need to go huge. 3-5 oz id say. To avoid the hop creep - chuck it right in the keezer. Ppl say to dry hop warm for max extraction of oils, but I firmly believe that you can dry hop cold - it just takes longer.


In my experience, the beer won’t peak untill about 2-3 weeks in the keezer. I use a floating dip tube , which allows me to drink beers as soon as carbed, but they aren’t totally blasting untill about week 3. If you use a traditional dip tube, you will get hop burn for the first couple weeks anyway.

I dialed this process in because of the hop creep sitch you described, and funny enough I have already seen that monkish clip and heeded the advice. Separate beer from yeast as soon as practical and dry hop small and often!

 

Option 3 is exactly what I was thinking. It should work.

 

Man I don’t know for sure it just works well for me - I find since I’ve focused on layering smaller hop additions rather than doing massive hop charges I get a better hop character in the final beer. I find that every NEIPA brewer says something different about dry hop timing though so you just gotta find what works for you. .

I was spunding my IPAs for a while, adding 4 or 5 oz of dry hop to the keg as I capped the fermentation. While this minimizes O2 pickup, I found that the amount of yeast and trub that wound up in the final beer was too much - as it eventually dropped to the bottom of the keg so did any hop flavour - I suspect all my oils were sorbed to the yeast particulate. This is why I think Monkish is on to something by dry hopping with the least amount of yeast possible - but I still like dry hopping early in addition to this.

Dry hopping cold in the keg solved my diacytle issue though: but it does take longer. Another benefit is that at cold temps, oxidative reactions will happen a little slower, so any O2 introduced at packaging will possibly be a little less impactful too? In this regard I have started adding a small amount of K meta at packaging to scavenge O2 - but I can’t honestly say if this is doing anything or not - but I haven’t noticed a negative impact so I’ll keep doing it for now.

 

I deal with this issue a lot on the commercial level, especially with London Ale 3.

1. Ramp temps at the end of fermentation, do a very thorough D-Rest. Do a simple VDK test around day 10. If you pass...
2. "Soft Crash" to 58-60F for 2 days
3. Dry hop as usual, we find no creep doing the above steps on 4-5 lb/bbl dry hops. We typically dry hop for 3 full days at this temperature. We keep a close eye on the tanks pressure to see if we are getting any creep.
4. Do another simple VDK test before you cold crash or send the beer to the serving keg. If you dont pass, just wait another day or two.

We accepted that good IPAs take around 25-30 days to turn around and slowed down our process. Cryo hops also tend to creep less, which is another reason we incorporate them into our dry hops. Hope this helps!

 

You made specific mention of London Ale 3 (e.g.,Wyeast 1318). Is hop creep sensitive to the specific yeast strain used? Does your strategy that you detailed 'work' for other yeast strains such as Wyeast 1098 or WLP007?

Cheers!

 

Good question, I don't think its necessarily specific to the yeast strain used. That being said, we notice LA3 throws a lot of D when this second hop creep fermentation occurs. I'm assuming most flocculant english strains would do the same.


This strategy has worked well with other flocculant English yeasts, so I'd say yes.

Some good discussion on Mad Fermentationist:

https://www.themadfermentationist.com/2018/02/sapwood-cellars-cheater-hops-ne-dipa.html

Yes, we maintain at 58F for the duration of the dry hop. Yes, we clear the cone as much as possible before dry hopping (usually to harvest for the next batch).

It's tough to say, but I'd recommend the following VDK test protocol before you throw the keg in the fridge:

https://www.winning-homebrew.com/diacetyl-test.html

 

Hop creep seems to happen indescriminate of yeast selection, just at a different pace.

For those without access to a GC, you can do a pretty effective test by just warming a sample and sniffing and tasting for VDK.

Like most challenges in brewing, take notes and repeat processes that work. I’ve noticed hop creep is much more prevalent in commercial batches. I’ve never had it at home. It is, however, consistent. 1968, for example, can seem to stall out at a normal gravity, then when you dry hop, can drop a whole point Plato! The trick is to take a lot of samples and good notes and figure out what works in your brewery.

 

Option 3 is my preferred method for dryhopping.

 

I have never experienced diacetyl in my NEIPAs/hazy IPAs, but have on several occasions with commercial versions. One thing I've often wondered is that my second dry hops are always done in a corny keg and I flip my kegs twice a day during dry hopping for oil dispersion purposes (advice given to me from Sean Lawson). Have wondered if that is secondarily keeping the yeast in suspension longer and allowing them to clean up their mess though...never dealt with hop creep either though.