Clean and fresh hop taste - how?

[Snoop]

I've been brewing for a quite a while, maybe 200 all grain brews. Tend to stick to hop forward beers, saisons and occasional foreys into some German styles. And the odd stout as my missus likes them.

One thing that I constantly notice when drinking hop forward beers from the top breweries is how fresh, zingy (not sure this is a word but..) and defined the hops in their beers taste. I had a mikkeller session pale yesterday and it was really great. Mine are never, ever like this. I make good pales, ipas etc but in reality they are miles away from this. Hoppy yes, but super bright and fresh, rarely. A bit muddled is probably the best way of describing it I guess. Now don't get me wrong the likes of cloudwater etc are top level pros that I don't expect to get anywhere near of course but I'd love to know how to improve this aspect of my beers. Part of it is perhaps they simply have fresher/better hops, or at least hops that have handled less so presumably oxidised less. I don't have issues with ferm temps or oxidation at packaging as I brew under pressure then push to a purged keg. I drink the beers pretty fresh so it's not that either.

It's mostly skill and experience of course, but I'm sure there are other factors I could maybe improve on. I've never tried keg hopping as it sounds like a pain but perhaps that's worth a go? Any other tips?

Cheers
Si

 

[trueblue]

Do you treat your water? you should look to treat your water for hop forward beers and maybe use a suitable yeast to match.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Some of those zingy beers have flavourings added.

The more hops you add the more likely you are to get hazy beer, oxidised beer, and hop burn. Maybe (a bit) less is more?

Some of the breweries filter the haze out so they get brighter beer.

Do you treat your water?

Some yeasts are better at accentuating the hops, what yeast are you using?

 

[Hanglow]

Just to add to points already raised,

I'd say lesser hops is one, the ones I get are always rather variable in general although some are great.

How about mash, pre-fermentation and post fermentation pH? Too high a beer pH can lead to muddled flavours. But you get better hop utilisationa t higher pH etc

If you mash for attenuation you tend to get better and less muddled malt flavours than one with too much residual sugar.

You also mention oxidation, are you sure you've got a handle on it? There's probably always something extra you could pursue, eg if you carb with bottled CO2 then switch to spunding. Have you looked at removing hot side oxidation?

 

[Snoop]

Some of those zingy beers have flavourings added.

The more hops you add the more likely you are to get hazy beer, oxidised beer, and hop burn. Maybe (a bit) less is more?

Some of the breweries filter the haze out so they get brighter beer.

Do you treat your water?

Some yeasts are better at accentuating the hops, what yeast are you using?

Aye I treat my water based on the grainfather app water calculatoe. I had it tested about a year back but quite how accurate that report is now is anyone's guess. To clarify when I say bright I mean the taste of the hops . Not the appearence (sorry I know bright means bright). They are mostly hazy beers. But they taste clean and fresh.

On the yeast side if I'm making a hazy beer I usually use London ale 3 or recently that verdant one. I've made one with a kveik blend too which was really good. For west coast style ones or pales I use nottingham normally. Sometimes s05 but I don't notice the difference between the 2.

Hot side aeration is an interesting one. I use a grainfather so I guess there is some when draining the basket and sparging but I'd expect that to boil off?

I mentioned filtering as I read cloud water use a centrefuge to get rid of the hop material before packaging. Not trying to get rid of haze. That said I think a centrefuge might be a bit beyond the homebrew scale . But might try a filter. One more thing to clean tho.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

You could try adding a little more sulphate, try mashing at a lower temperature, and try something like Liberty Bell yeast. Use a light malt too - Pilsner or extra pale.

The hops you use and timing of hops obviously make a difference, do you whirlpool/hopstand?

What’s your dry hop regime?

 

[foxy]

Aye I treat my water based on the grainfather app water calculatoe. I had it tested about a year back but quite how accurate that report is now is anyone's guess. To clarify when I say bright I mean the taste of the hops . Not the appearence (sorry I know bright means bright). They are mostly hazy beers. But they taste clean and fresh.

On the yeast side if I'm making a hazy beer I usually use London ale 3 or recently that verdant one. I've made one with a kveik blend too which was really good. For west coast style ones or pales I use nottingham normally. Sometimes s05 but I don't notice the difference between the 2.

Hot side aeration is an interesting one. I use a grainfather so I guess there is some when draining the basket and sparging but I'd expect that to boil off?

I mentioned filtering as I read cloud water use a centrefuge to get rid of the hop material before packaging. Not trying to get rid of haze. That said I think a centrefuge might be a bit beyond the homebrew scale . But might try a filter. One more thing to clean tho.

You may find that an increasing number of craft breweries are following commercial breweries in using the various types of hop extracts there are. But on a home brew scale you can still brew a bright hop forward beer using pellets.
HSA cannot be boiled off, it takes minutes to oxidise non enzymatic lipids during the mashing process which leads to premature staling. How much it matters to home brewers is debatable, but for myself I err on the side of caution.

 

[Snoop]

On the HSA then if the main problem is premature staling then that defo isnt gonna be an issue with my really hoppy ones. The kegs are drank in 2-3 weeks tops. I have brewed with incognito and found it a little unusual and a real pain to clean off my GF. I did a beer with just flex for bittering and 2*15ml tubes incognito (Sabro and citra) whirlpool with no dry hops. It was nice but not what I was expecting.

On the points above I do whirlpool though only recently at 80c. I rarely use extra pale malt but thinking about it that might be a good avenue to explore. Dry hop schedule is usually either 50–100g at terminal gravity if making a pale ale or standard ipa. A hazy/soft one I’ll usually do 2 dry hops, 100g at high Krausen then 100g when settle down. Almost always some combo of citra and mosaic for the neipas. Fairly standard stuff really.

I am not keen on these stupidly murky neipas that look like orange juice. I like a nice bright haze (well that’s sort of a contradiction but you know what I mean) but not a muddy beer.

 

[dan125]

Until I got to the end of OP I was thinking it must be oxidation, and it's still worth considering how O2 free your process is - could you be introducing O2 when dry hopping at terminal gravity for example?

Hop quality can definitely be a problem but I think the quality and consistency has got much better recently and I haven't had any bad hops from MM, GEB or CML in well over a year. Have learnt the hard way not to use hops that don't smell great out of the packet.

Are you making standard 20ish litre size batches?
50-100g dry hop isn't enough for a decent fresh hoppy hit in pales/ipas IMO.
And in your hazies I would go for a much smaller Bio-T addition (10-20% of total dry hop) and leave the bulk of the dry hopping to the end for a bigger fresher hop character.

 

[Cheyne_brewer]

It may be that the brewers of the beers you are trying to emulate are using a hop rocket / missile / torpedo system to maximise aroma but minimise the unwanted effects of a large dry hop or whirlpool addition.

 

[Leon103]

On the HSA then if the main problem is premature staling then that defo isnt gonna be an issue with my really hoppy ones. The kegs are drank in 2-3 weeks tops. I have brewed with incognito and found it a little unusual and a real pain to clean off my GF. I did a beer with just flex for bittering and 2*15ml tubes incognito (Sabro and citra) whirlpool with no dry hops. It was nice but not what I was expecting.

On the points above I do whirlpool though only recently at 80c. I rarely use extra pale malt but thinking about it that might be a good avenue to explore. Dry hop schedule is usually either 50–100g at terminal gravity if making a pale ale or standard ipa. A hazy/soft one I’ll usually do 2 dry hops, 100g at high Krausen then 100g when settle down. Almost always some combo of citra and mosaic for the neipas. Fairly standard stuff really.

I am not keen on these stupidly murky neipas that look like orange juice. I like a nice bright haze (well that’s sort of a contradiction but you know what I mean) but not a muddy beer.

Reading this I have to agree with Dan. If you are making normal 20 litre plus batches you need more hops.

Another good point dan made was to notnuse so much in your first dry hop and move most of that to the 2nd dry hop