Ok this is a very obscure type of post but maybe someone could comment. I have been working for awhile on New England style IPAs with pretty good success. New style "tropical" hops, high chloride to sulfate ratio, huge late hop and dry hop additions, expressive yeast, etc.. My last attempt had close to a pound of hops for a 5.5 gallon batch. The beer had no obvious defects except very little hop flavor or aroma even with my highest hop charges to date. After racking my brain as to differences in recipe and technique I came up with only one thing that even seemed possible. I used no kettle fining agent. The idea was to carry more protein from the kettle into the fermenter that might interact with hop polyphenols to form the typical NEIPA haziness. Well, there was huge murkiness in the wort transferred to the fermenter so I certainly accomplished my goal of more protein and other debris. Typically the wort is fairly bright. Here's my thought: the desired proteins for permanent haze are smaller molecules that eventually interact with polyphenols to form a haze. I believe these initial proteins are dissolved and not visible until the bonding with polyphenols to produce a larger compound. The visible murkiness of the wort contained a large amount of large protein that is going to eventually settle out no matter what in the fermenter. That was the case because the haziness when bottling was no more than normal. So, could all this protein settling out also strip out hop compounds? I added dry hops early which is not unusual for NEIPAs so there may have been quite a bit of the large protein debris that was still in suspension and some hop oils could have adhered or otherwise interacted with the large protein molecules and settled.
Any thoughts at all or similar experiences? I will try another similar recipe and go back to using Whirlfloc in the kettle.
Thanks, Bob
Any thoughts at all or similar experiences? I will try another similar recipe and go back to using Whirlfloc in the kettle.
Thanks, Bob