I have noticed that a number of the hoppy IPAs that I really like have significant haze to them. They seem to have more flavour to them than the usual supermarket fare. Some good examples are Northern Monk’s Faith, Beavertown Lupuloid (or Gamma Ray), Magic Rock’s Saucery to name but three. But there are lots of others out there, particularly from some of the smaller brewers. [Have you looked in Aldi lately? There’s some interesting stuff going on in the beer aisle!].
So I thought I should have a look at producing something similar, particularly the haze thing. However, this seems a bit weird. I have spent many hours try to produce a clear beer and avoid the haze! And now I am trying to produce a hazy IPA!
First step was to find a decent recipe as a starting point. I found a clone recipe for one of those hoppy IPAs – Northern Monk’s Faith – on the Grainfather community site. I had all the ingredients, so there was nothing to stop me brewing it. Without thinking, I put Irish Moss in the boil and then cold crashed it before bottling. Two techniques I use routinely, but both are aimed at reducing haze. It is just what I normally do! Duh! It was brew 52. It is actually not bad. Probably a little more bitter than the original. But definitely clearer!
OK. Time for another go! So this time I repeated the brew, but no Irish Moss, no cold crash. I also tweaked the recipe to reduce the bitterness and bump up the flavour. To do this, I removed the bittering hops at the start of the boil and introduced them at 20min and 10 mins instead. Then a big hopstand for 30 mins. This produces a brew with an IBU of 45. The Northern Monk website lists Faith as having an IBU of 30, so there is still some room to reduce this bitterness further.
The recipe is here on the Grainfather site. It is brew number 60 in the pilot batches. This was an improvement. Definitely less bitterness and more flavour. More loads of sediment in the bottom of the bottle due to the lack of the cold crash.
OK. Time for a third go. This time it is the new recipe (I reduced the bitterness down even further to an IBU of 29) but with a cold crash and half a tablet of protafloc to aid clearing. It was brew 63. This is by far my favourite of the three (although all three are very drinkable!).
UPDATE 31/10/20: So Brew 60 has been in the cellar for about a week after having a week in the warm. It is still cloudy although a lot of sediment has settled out in the bottom of the bottle. A quick taste of a sample bottle proved that it still has some way to go – yes, there is a lot more flavour in it, but the bitterness needs to have time to settle down. A couple of more weeks in the cellar will help.
However, with this amount of sediment in the bottom of the bottle, I can’t help thinking that this is not the right approach. Maybe skipping the Irish Moss, but cold crashing is a better approach. This will allow the cold crash to remove the sediment, but the lack of Irish Moss will mean that the beer has more of a protein haze. This should be my next experiment!
UPDATE 10/11/20: A couple of weeks more in the cellar. It is still pretty cloudy, but there is a lot of sediment in the bottom of the bottle. But the good news is that it is full of flavour with non of the bitterness of my previous attempt. I am sure that a couple of more weeks in the cellar will tame this one, but it won’t do much to reduce the amount of sediment. I have another batch of this brew about to bottle. This time it has been cold crashed and protafloc added to the boil. This should sort out the sediment.
