• Welcome to the new forum! We upgraded our forum software with a host of new boards, capabilities and features. It is also more secure.
    Jump in and join the conversation! You can learn more about the upgrade and new features here.

Survivables

Finn Berger

Brewer
Joined
Sep 13, 2022
Messages
62
Reaction score
30
Has anybody tried combining hops with success based on the survivables chart? I've just brewed a beer with a massive dose of Citra, Mosaic, Loral and Chinook for 20 minutes at 82 degrees C. Planning to dryhop with only Strata, as that had worked very well in a former brew.

Any thoughts on this?
 
It should work ac to the science, but I have not tried it myself yet.
 
Denny Conn was rather enthusiastic about what it had done to his IPA - and he has made quite a few of them, I think:).

It's seems fascinatingly simple. You are told which hops will have most effect when, and you can get a fairly good idea about which hops should be combined to get a more complex aroma/flavor. I'm a simple soul, so I have just focused on which hops to use to get a good mix of linalool and geraniol - which I luckily don't have to be a rocket scientist to read out of that chart. Time to go deeper into the "minor" oils, and thiols and esters later.

Conn says he's a bit scared of the idea of biotransformation, as it's not easily controlled. I'm with him there, so I go for post-fermentation dry-hopping. (But of course you can't avoid biotranformation of the stuff you've extraxted on the hot side:).)

Like Conn I've got a beerloving spouse to keep happy, and she's partial to NEIPAs, so this is important to me:)!
 
I hadn't considered the survivables chart before when building a recipe, but seeing that Idaho 7 is 2nd from the top makes me think I need to brew with that again. Of course, now knowing it's #2 might make for some confirmation bias in the beer I brew with it. :giggle:

A few years ago I did a SMaSH with Idaho 7 (bittering and flameout), and I really enjoyed what the hop brought to the table. I might have to try it as a whirlpool hop (I generally avoid dry hopping whenever I can, due to O2 ingress risks).

I still have several pounds of Artic (a Citra clone) in my freezer that I bought from a nearby hop yard that went toes-up a couple years ago. I think there are more IPAs in my future. But I digress...

Charts like those are a bit dangerous for me, as I enjoy the science of brewing and tend to read into such data perhaps a little too much.
 
I hadn't considered the survivables chart before when building a recipe, but seeing that Idaho 7 is 2nd from the top makes me think I need to brew with that again. Of course, now knowing it's #2 might make for some confirmation bias in the beer I brew with it. :giggle:

A few years ago I did a SMaSH with Idaho 7 (bittering and flameout), and I really enjoyed what the hop brought to the table. I might have to try it as a whirlpool hop (I generally avoid dry hopping whenever I can, due to O2 ingress risks).

I still have several pounds of Artic (a Citra clone) in my freezer that I bought from a nearby hop yard that went toes-up a couple years ago. I think there are more IPAs in my future. But I digress...

Charts like those are a bit dangerous for me, as I enjoy the science of brewing and tend to read into such data perhaps a little too much.
I wouldn't worry about the O2 ingress. As long as you've got fairly active yeast going in there, it will mop up what little you let in before it can do any damage - at least as long as you take care to not bee too careless.

I've got a lot of faith in yeast:). I've been dry hopping my NEIPAs for a long time with no extreme measures, and they've shoved no signs of oxidation. And I'm bottling all my beers, too. And oxidation really is no issue. (This of course is anecdotal evidence, and thus is no evidence at all:). It's just a data point. But it's a fact my NEIPAs are not oxidised.)

For some science to back this up, you can go to George Fix' Principles of Brewing Science, p. 130. He states that oxygen absorbed at room temperatures will remain an inert gas for a long time, giving the yeast plenty of room to handle it.
 
I wouldn't worry about the O2 ingress. As long as you've got fairly active yeast going in there, it will mop up what little you let in before it can do any damage - at least as long as you take care to not bee too careless.

I've got a lot of faith in yeast:). I've been dry hopping my NEIPAs for a long time with no extreme measures, and they've shoved no signs of oxidation. And I'm bottling all my beers, too. And oxidation really is no issue. (This of course is anecdotal evidence, and thus is no evidence at all:). It's just a data point. But it's a fact my NEIPAs are not oxidised.)

For some science to back this up, you can go to George Fix' Principles of Brewing Science, p. 130. He states that oxygen absorbed at room temperatures will remain an inert gas for a long time, giving the yeast plenty of room to handle it.

If you've been dry hopping NEIPAs for a long time, that's several data points. :) And that style is arguably the most susceptible to oxidation effects. The fact that you have had good results with it is encouraging.

I just cracked open the first bottles of a RyePA that I did whirlpool hopping but no dry hopping. The flavor and aroma were rather underwhelming. I might go back to dry hopping such beers. I ferment in Brew Buckets, so I could pop the top, quickly throw in the hop pellets and button it back up.
 
If you've been dry hopping NEIPAs for a long time, that's several data points. :) And that style is arguably the most susceptible to oxidation effects. The fact that you have had good results with it is encouraging.

I just cracked open the first bottles of a RyePA that I did whirlpool hopping but no dry hopping. The flavor and aroma were rather underwhelming. I might go back to dry hopping such beers. I ferment in Brew Buckets, so I could pop the top, quickly throw in the hop pellets and button it back up.
hehe - several:)!

The procedure you're sketching, is what I used to do, too. And it worked. But when the time came to renew my aresenal of buckets, I switched to Keglands flat bottom PET vessels (picture below). So now I just unscrew one of the caps on the lid, put in a funnel and let the pellets tumble down through that. I don't think I let in much air that way.

When I bottle, I transfer to a 30 liter Speidel for mixing with speise, and bottle from that one using an ordinary bottling wand. These days I get rid of any air through first filling the Speidel with Starsan - well, actually I keep it always filled with Starsan - and then pressing the sanitizer out with CO2. Then I connect the fermenter and the Speidel with silicon tubes so that they are in a loop - and no air gets in. And when I bottle, I connect the CO2 tank to the Speidel. But I do nothing to purge the bottles. I fill them almost to the brim, though, so there is very little headspace that contains air. This seems to work fine. The survivables seem to survive this quite well:).

I am not sure that all that fiddling around with CO2 is necessary, though. I had no trouble before I started doing that, either, meaning my NEIPAs were nice and bright yellow (and hazy, of course) at least for as long as they lasted, which usually was/is a couple of months. And I remember one that survived in the back of the fridge for half a year, and it was still quite nice, though it had lost a fair bit of aroma, of course. But as I have started using CO2, I don't dare to go back:).



1666765654632.png

The procedure you're sketching, is what I used to do, too. And it worked. But when the
 
Back
Top