Juicy Beer!

Steve SPF

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I'm getting amazing beers from my favourite local brewer. There's little to no bitterness and great juicy/fruity flavours in there; really nice smooth beers.

How are they achieving that? One of them is an amazing session IPA at 4.7% so it's not a massive hop profile like a NEIPA, or at least I don't think it is. Anyone care to speculate? I would like to try that style myself but the brewers don't give a lot away and I don't know where to start!
 
Two cents much appreciated!

That would be quite a lot of expensive hops there. Not NEIPA expensive but significant. An interesting recipe though and I do have 300gm of Citra in the cupboard which would ease the pain a bit.
 
There's little to no bitterness and great juicy/fruity flavours in there; really nice smooth beers. How are they achieving that?

No hops are not added to boil, in fact Dog Fish Head has an IPA where no hops are ever boiled. https://www.dogfish.com/brewery/beer/liquid-truth-serum

Hops added to the whirlpool at 170F (77C) will add bitterness and still retain the hop aroma and flavor. Brewers Friend has a hop utilization adjustment for whirlpool additions which works very well to predict bitterness in the whirlpool. I regularly brew beers without any boil additions, this allows me to add a lot of hops while keeping the bitterness in check. I set the hop utilization to 3% for a whirlpool addition @165-170F. I let it set for 20 minutes, you set longer, but I don't see any difference from when I do 20 or 40 minute stands. I have won a lot of home brew competitions using this method, it works very well.

Below is a beer I did recently. An owner of a brewery gave me 18 ounces of a T45 Citra hop. The alpha acid were too high (18%) to add to the boil and I wanted to use all of them in a single 7 gallon batch, so I whirlpooled 12 ounces (340 grams) and dry hopped with the rest. The beer turned wonderful. The bitterness was calculated to be @ 75 IBU, but it tasted more like 50-55 IBU. The beer was juicy, but not too bitter. Lots of tangerine and grapefruit. It's called an Easter IPA, but I use this as base recipe whenever I want to brew an experimental IPA.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/221081/easter-ipa
 
I was wondering about bittering additions but, wow, no hops in the boil at all? That is interesting
 
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Below is a beer I did recently. An owner of a brewery gave me 18 ounces of a T45 Citra hop. The alpha acid were too high (18%) to add to the boil and I wanted to use all of them in a single 7 gallon batch, so I whirlpooled 12 ounces (340 grams) and dry hopped with the rest. The beer turned wonderful. The bitterness was calculated to be @ 75 IBU, but it tasted more like 50-55 IBU. The beer was juicy, but not too bitter. Lots of tangerine and grapefruit. It's called an Easter IPA, but I use this as base recipe whenever I want to brew an experimental IPA.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/221081/easter-ipa

That recipe is interesting. I've seen a stepped mash in other recipes and often wonder what the benefits might be but, also, how is it achieved? My mash tun is just an insulated vessel that can't be heated so how to raise the temp in order to achieve a stepped mash?
 
For me the big juicy hop flavour aroma is using one or many of the various techniques people are playing with. These are things like using lower temperatures, later hop additions, bigger dry hop rates, more protein in the grist, different yeasts and your hop choice.

As highvoltageman mentioned adding the hops at lower temperatures will give you that lower bitterness, but it will still be warm enough to get out the hop materials. Personally I still like a bit of bitterness, so I may add some to the mash, boil or steep at higher temperatures depending on the beer.

For the post boil hop additions it seems you need at least 10 minutes. The temperature you use will alter the bitterness and taste you get. So you could even try splitting your steeping additions into two and adding at different temperatures to play around with what each adds. These post boil hop additions additions allow more polyphenols and other hop substances to stay in the wort more than the boil additions.

Then people are playing around with dry hopping rates that move from 6 g/litre up to insane rates (I had a 40 g/L yesterday). Personally I'm staying with 6 g/Lat the moment. I think I'd probably get more if I went for 8-10 g/L split into two or more dry hops, but I'm happy with what I get from the 6 g/L. It also seems that the post boil additions help here as well, as more of the dry hop materials attach to post boil hop materials, amplifying the dry hop a little.

To increase the proteins and polyphenols in the beer even more you can add some protein heavy grains like oats or wheat that will give the hops even more things to attach to in the wort.

Each of these steps will add a small or a large amount of haze, so depending on what you're going for you may only use one technique, or you may mix in a few.

People are also finding that using yeast with an English heritage can increase the juicy notes in some hops. These yeasts will create an enzyme that will change some hop oils, like geraniol to more citrusy oils, like citranellol. Though this depends on using the right yeast and the right hops.

Then, for me, the juicy dimension really comes from the hop you use. Hops like citra, mosaic, galaxy are the main ones, but there's plenty that will also provide or help promote those juicy flavours.
 
That recipe is interesting. I've seen a stepped mash in other recipes and often wonder what the benefits might be but, also, how is it achieved? My mash tun is just an insulated vessel that can't be heated so how to raise the temp in order to achieve a stepped mash?
I step mash because it's fairly easy for me. I have a RIMS system so all I have to do is just adjust the temperature and it's done. The benefits I've seen from it are increased extraction efficiencies and more complete starch conversion. Some claim it increases head retention and mouth feel because the higher temperatures increase the amount of dextrins (Gordon Strong for instance), but I'm not convinced of that. A step mash is not needed to make that beer, but I think it improves my process, so I do it.
 
If you can't heat your mash container you're pretty much limited to adding boiling water. The mash calculator on the site here will give the amount of boiling water you need to hit a higher temperature.

I'm a lazy full volume masher so don't know how people adjust mash thickness to account for the extra water added mid-mash. If i had to do it, I'd probably just start a bit thicker and finish a bit thinner.

Or you can go old school and try some hot stones

 
Yeah that is some volcano action when he drops them rocks in cool. Amazing how he didnt manage to damage the pot either.
 

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