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Hey guys,
The past couple of years I have been brewing many different variations of NEIPA's. It is certainly a puzzle to find the right combination of yeast and hop character to make a beer with minimal bitterness and fruit forward flavors. I have been dialing in my process to remove the whirlpool and dry hops from the final packed beer but I keep running into the problem of having hop burn the first couple of weeks after packing. As it stands right now I add my whirlpool hops loose in the kettle and I have a mesh screen to keep the hops behind. I then dry hop my beer 3 days after fermentation is complete with at least 6+ ounces of hops and let them sit for an additional 3 days before cold crashing for 48 hours. I then do a closed transfer from the conical to my purged keg after dumping as much yeast and hop material from the cone. At this point I usually clog the keg poppit a couple of times and can see the hop particles in the transferring tubing. I believe this is where I am creating the "hop burn" in my packaged beer due to the material that it is making it into the keg. Does anyone on the forum have any suggestions as to how they removing the hops on the way to the keg? I have been looking at in-line mesh strainers and I have heard of people having luck with gelatin.

You could try using a sanitized hop bag for the dry hops. I put a few metal marbles in there too for weighing it down. That might help with the hop particles getting into the keg tubing.

That being said, I saw a post recently from a professional brewer in the US who said that super fresh is not best for NEIPA which is opposite of what I have heard before. They said it was optimum two weeks after packaging. I found that to be true recently when I got some Malternate Reality from North that was canned two days before I received it. Tried one right away and thought it was a bad batch but left the rest. Couple of weeks later they tasted amazing.

Maybe a little patience is all you need!

not sure if this is of any help but i just got one of these from Aliexpress (kegland) for my floating dip tub in my fermenter. Not sure if this would work in your set up but a good way to keep unwanted hop particles out of the keg.

I feel like the taste best fresh was due to process allowing O2 in so to avoid the aging decline they all said drink fresh as possible. Now that processes have improve and minimal O2 exposure occurs they are better after a few weeks. As far as keeping particles out I use a ss mesh cylinder to dry hop with.


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I have been use the keg hop stopper on the end of my dip tube to prevent the hop particulate getting into the poppets but it hasn't stopped the hop burn flavor the first couple of weeks. I like the suggestion of using a floating dip tube because then the beer has a chance to settle out while I am serving off the keg. I also agree that these beers generally need a week or two in the keg to really hit their stride.