Been looking into darkening of NEIPA myself, and chatting with Adam from Baldy's brewery on youtube... Here's what i came up with as an additional cause for NEIPA's going brown. Especially bottle conditioned ones.
Here's how it went. ...
a bit of a brainwave theory. So, we dry hop and then crash chill the beer. For a keg, the beer is then racked to the keg, and pretty much stuck straight back in a chilled fridge to carbonate. The beer is always cold and stays nice and orange / fresh looking, A bottle conditioned beer has to be brought back up to fermentation temps to carbonate.
Now, that beer I spoke about, once bottled I didnt put it straight back in the fridge as I was posting it.
Maybe the warm temps causes the browning of the suspended hop matter? A bit like how most vegetal matter goes brown if left out. We refrigerate stuff to keep it fresh. Salad would be brown in a day or so at room temp, but in fridge lasts longer.
I might try and get two identical bottles off the keg, refrigerate one, and leave one at room temp and see what happens. Worth a go!
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So, as I mentioned a few weeks ago on your YouTube video, I thought I'd do a quick test to see how temperature affects NEIPA's.
I CO2 purged the crap out of everything, lines, beer jumper, filled these two bottles with starsan completely, the bled it off (all over the floor) using more Co2. Filled both from the keg and then left one in the fridge, and the other I put in a cardboard tube in a cupboard in the kitchen. Probably sits about 15-18°.
Now they will both have had a small amount of light strike, the fridge one more than the cupboard, bit I think the result of that is reasonably conclusive?
Which makes me think raised temperatures for natural carbonation of NEIPA'S in bottles is also what causes darkening.
First pic Feb 22nd. Second pic Mar 7th. ~10days.
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So, it may not just be oxygen causing issues.
Ross.