I've brewed a few NEIPA's and I've been pretty careful using a pressurized Brewzilla all-rounder with a hop-bong and end to end CO2 transfer and had good results so far, but after watching this video I don't think you can overthink your process or be too careful.I’m planning another NEIPA brew day in a couple of weeks, so have started getting the ingredients together, and giving the brew day process a bit of thought. I’ve done three NEIPA brews now and haven’t had any oxidation issues to date serving from a 5 gallon pressure barrel over 6-7 weeks. But was considering ways to minimise the risk.
I do closed transfer and flush my pressure barrel with fermentation gas beforehand, so my attention has turned to the fermentation stage. Currently, as others do, I load my dry hops in to the fermentation bucket/vessel when I pitch the yeast, so in theory there’s a risk of early oxidation of the hops while fermentation gets underway to flush the air from the headspace in the bucket. So, I thoughtif I load the dry hops into their container a day or two before brew day and put them in the freezer, when I put the frozen dry hops in the bucket, the few hours it would take for them to thaw (while fermentation gets underway) could reduce oxidation risks even further.
Yes, probably overthinking it, but thought I’d see what others think.
For NEIPA's we're talking 50 parts per Billion as dissolved oxygen as the threshold to oxidation damage.
That works out to be 0.45 milliliters of air (~20% O2) to 1000 liters of Beer, though I think we are talking about post fermentation so you should be ok while the beer is fermenting and producing CO2.
