Hop Stabilisation

[RdeVjun]

Granted, there many complex factors outlined above and some are quite difficult to quantify, but I wouldn't discount desensitisation of the palate. Getting a second opinion would be helpful too, competitions are worthwhile in this respect (ed. although picking an entry from several candidates where you feel the character may be suffering is a challenge, so perhaps phone an impartial friend if you can.)

 

[UsernameTaken]

I see what your saying, but I really do not think this is the case. I have been bottling for many years and have drank the beer too early and then when it is good and then seen the hops slowly fall away over many weeks.

But now in the keg I am good to go after 3 days at 20 PSI, so am seeing a very different rate of transition in my beer!

I only started kegging this year and even more recently started experimenting with very large doses of late and dry hops. 9 to 13.5 g/L so far.

To my surprise these beer were amazing after 3 days in the keg and stayed that way for another 48 hours or so, but then sadly started to fall away very quickly to the point where by day 6 it was a completely different beer.

In fact with some of my earlier experiments, like an 11 g/L whirlpool addition, I thought I had gone too far with hops as it was off the chart day 5. But a week later it was very drinkable.

It now seems the heavy dry hop additions fall away even more quickly!

 

[RdeVjun]

Yep, agreed, really wanted to make sure it didn't fall off the radar as just one of the many factors.
Similar experiences here although not tipping in hops to the same extent, but I don't have high expectations that late & dry hops character will persist reliably- sometimes it does, others not and it is perplexing.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Gordon Strong covers some of this in his excellent book 'Brewing better beer'

 

[MHB]

There was a saying popularised among some of the early West Coast AIPA brewers
"14 Days from Grain to Brain!" that's 1 week to make it and 1 week to drink it. Personally for the hops to the exclusion of everything else styles, I have to agree.
Similar to Hefeweizen, they are at there best very young and don't improve with storage (or transport), probably why we see so little of what should be a craft brewery staple in Australia.

There are things you can do to eke out a bit more death by hops, but unless you are willing to put in a lot of time and effort, I would brew smaller batches more often and drink them young.
Mark

 

[Coodgee]

I find that with big IPAs, and I'm talking dry hopping at 10g/l and 5g/l whirlpool, when they are first kegged they have a strong flavour but it's got every aroma and flavour under the sun in there, and a lot of them are harsh or undesirable. After some time, and perhaps with fining, a lot of these aromas and flavours, both good and bad, dissipate. But then what I find happens is that after about 6-8 weeks in the kegs you get a really pure, pleasant hop aroma that is quite strong and only contains the really nice fruit/floral aromas that you want out of hops. My conjecture is that maybe desirable volatile hop oils are released over time that are suspended in the beer, long after the undesirable compounds have dissipated or settled out of suspension on the bottom of the keg. This could possibly be due to instrument error (my nose) but it's not a subtle thing for me. after I came back from a one month holiday, I had a citra IPA that just ponged of lovely fruity aroma, i.e.m the aroma was very strong.

 

[UsernameTaken]

Is your transfer from fermenter to keg oxygen free?

 

[Dave70]

Is your transfer from fermenter to keg oxygen free?

Thats a point.
Do the pros do all transfers in a nitrogen / CO2 environment?

 

[UsernameTaken]

I believe so?

 

[Danscraftbeer]

I do co2 transfers properly now. Zero exposure to oxygen/air and it does have improvement but there still is loss in hop aroma that happens quite quick in the serving time but I take it as that's the nature of things. Like I mentioned I hop stand at ~7g/l. I see others go much higher than that but my problem with that is I use flowers a lot and its like a pillow full of hops flowers soak up a lot of beer!
I have had beers that are over the top in hoppiness like using say Galaxy as an example. Over the top early in serving then mellows fairly quick. The thing I'm getting common now is the hop arome dissipates but the hop flavour is still right up there high and potent. So! Considering reality you can only detect the aroma when you smell it before you drink your first glass. After that your senses in that way are saturated and you cant smell it any more anyway so I'm happy to settle with big hop flavour that lasts (in the keg, or bottle over time, like months etc) even if the aroma doesn't. Then again the hop flavour does diminish a little over time as well but it seems to blend and let the malt become more present as well.
$0.02

 

[UsernameTaken]

I am syphoning out of my open fermenter into an open keg as the tap pulls through too much crud!

In fact my current IPA with 9g/l of dry hop pellets has totally clogged the tap up and I cannot even take a sample!

How do you transfer Dan?

 

[Danscraftbeer]

I've gone totally pressure ferment and co2 pressure transfers. I also purge my serving kegs properly by filling them to the brim with star san and then co2 pressured force out the star san to empty the keg before the beer gets transfers into it. Never open exposures etc. So effectively my beer never gets exposed to air post ferment.

If this sounds difficult it isn't! Its actually easier, no messes, no exposures. I have to stress this point that its far easier, cleaner, purer with better results and no stressfull situations.

I've practically given away dry hopping. Big Hop stands as the alternative.
Clean wort fermentation with no hop matter to block up and frustrate etc.
The only snag I hit was trying to dry hop with pellets. The odd exceptions to dry hop with flowers in a sock in the serving keg before pressure transferring in the beer. Pellets are no good in the serving keg though, small particles, crud etc blocking up keg outposts is a prick.

 

[Danscraftbeer]

Add to that^^. When pressure fermenting and a dry (hop pellets in a sock) addition blocked the gas out with spunding valve and the ferment pressure reached 40 psi when I found it and that is a potentially dangerous situation. Like bottle bombs think if I didn't attend to the situation I could have had a keg bomb. That's pretty scary. Blocked all PRV, Gas post and beer post.
I nearly got shot in the head with the dip tube when I was forced to remove it. Then experienced a beer volcano situation.
So I stress another note: Don't use hop pellets in pressure fermentation vessels!

 

[UsernameTaken]

Duly noted. I'm safe for now as I don't even know what pressure fermenting is!

Just googling it ...

 

[Rocker1986]

Mine aren't done in a closed system, but I solve the crud problem in a couple of different ways. With 21L batches I just drain 3 glasses of it out of the tap before transfer because I can't be fucked mucking around with bottles for a litre or so of beer. With 25L batches, the surplus goes into the small keg first, so it ends up in there, then the 19L keg is filled second.

The hose goes on the tap into the bottom of the open keg. Maybe the period they sit at room temp before being put in the keg fridge helps mop up some of whatever oxygen is in there, I don't know, but I don't experience huge drops in hop influence quickly. Having said that, I don't put huge amounts of hops into the beer either so perhaps that's another factor in it.

 

[UsernameTaken]

I watched the video thanks wide eye. Very interesting and informative but did not really address my issue of rapid loss of hop flavour!

The best leads I seem to have so far are;

A. Oxygen exposure during fermenter to keg transfer - If so I don't know what to do as my tap is blocked with hop debris!

B. It's perfectly normal so don't taste before 7 days - if so pretty frustrating as the beer is so good from 3 to 5 days and this is what I want stabilised for 6 to 8 weeks or more!

Cheers,
UNT

 

[wide eyed and legless]

The video was just an introduction to Gordon Strong, its the book you will need to read, he has given away dry hopping but he does have an interesting hop regime for example he covers first wort hopping, (hopping at mash out) he believes that the higher pH gives a better hop flavour but only if your IBU is going to be over 50.
Hereis how he hops a AIPA, I, won't print the whole recipe just his hop additions.
28 g Amarillo, 14 g Tomahawk @ 20 mins
14 g Tomahawk @ 15 mins
14 g Tomahawk @ 10 mins
14 g Simcoe @ 5 mins
28 g Amarillo @ 2 mins
14 g Simcoe @ 0 mins
Then bring down the temperature of the wort ASAP.
He does suggest that to achieve what you are after for a home brewer is to make up a Randall and minimising oxygen exposure already suggested.

QUOTE FROM TECHNOBABBLE
I believe some of the US brewers known for their super-hoppy beers go to great lengths to minimise O2 exposure during the post-dry-hopping stages.

 

[GalBrew]

I've gone totally pressure ferment and co2 pressure transfers. I also purge my serving kegs properly by filling them to the brim with star san and then co2 pressured force out the star san to empty the keg before the beer gets transfers into it. Never open exposures etc. So effectively my beer never gets exposed to air post ferment.

If this sounds difficult it isn't! Its actually easier, no messes, no exposures. I have to stress this point that its far easier, cleaner, purer with better results and no stressfull situations.

I've practically given away dry hopping. Big Hop stands as the alternative.
Clean wort fermentation with no hop matter to block up and frustrate etc.
The only snag I hit was trying to dry hop with pellets. The odd exceptions to dry hop with flowers in a sock in the serving keg before pressure transferring in the beer. Pellets are no good in the serving keg though, small particles, crud etc blocking up keg outposts is a prick.

So when you do a closed transfer, how do you know when your keg is full? Do you weigh it or just go off your fermenter volume markings? I've been thinking of going this way myself. Aside from your pressure ferments have you noticed an improvement due to closed transfers?

 

[UsernameTaken]

So what is the best way to transfer from fermenter to keg if my fermenter tap is completely clogged from all my dry hop additions?

 

[Dave70]

So what is the best way to transfer from fermenter to keg if my fermenter tap is completely clogged from all my dry hop additions?

Got to Bunnings, get ye some 10 mm vinyl tube and get succky with it. You can clip it to the rim of the fermenter with a clothes peg so you dont stand there holding it for ten minutes if you like.
Or do what I did. Try and clear it by blowing in it, only to have it re clog in seconds flat. Then get the shits. Then go to Bunnings.