So I am cooking up another brew inspirations post. This time it will be a NEIPA! Is this seasonal?? Well for the US an IPA is probably always in season. So... Here is what happened.
I had a pilsner from a local brewery that had been dry hopped with mandarina bavaria, but it also seemed to have been whirlpooled with it as well. It had so much citris flavor jumping out of it that I was really taken aback by it. I really thought hard about how I could retain so much delicate hop oil in a beer post fermentation with an ale yeast strain. For me it seems like it always is lost in the fermentation. So the more I thought about it I came to a conclusion: why not just do a whirlpool in water and pour that water in the keg post fementation and then transfer on top of that? IS THIS MADNESS? Well we will soon find out. This NEIPA is currently fermenting, it has no boil hops, only whirlpool, dry hop, and post fermentation whirlpool.
Let me know your thoughts on this and what process you would deploy to accomplish it. I am torn between a standard whirlpool in a small pot or using our french press. I will post the full brew inspirations as well as the recipe once I have tasted it.
P.S. I am not the first to think of this. There is some limited information online about people trying this.
So how did this turn out? Anything you recommend or warn against?
My first thought went to making sure the water & hops were sterilized. What about using hop extract?
I haven't tried this yet but I've been reading lately about "thiolized" recipes (see e.g., https://beerandbrewing.com/your-guide-to-thiolized-yeast/). They claim that you can get all of those tropical aromas with no dry hopping or even using hops in the boil. In some cases, you can supposedly go completely hop-free by extracting thiols from the mash ( https://omegayeast.com/all-about-our-thiolized-yeast-series "One of the most interesting discoveries in all of our research into thiols has been the emerging information about thiol precursors in malt. In one of our trials, we brewed a test batch with 100% two-row malt and added no hops, letting our Thiolized yeast run with what was available, and the results were incredible — we observed an increase of free thiols nearly ten times se…
As we discussed, the main thing I would worry about is contamination from the hops perhaps containing some errant bacteria or yeasts. My understanding is pasteurization is around 160F so as long as you boil the water first then let it cool down to say 170F for the whirlpool you should be good to go. Or you could use store bought R.O. water and likely use it straight out of the bottle... good luck