Hop Flavor - Vegetal

I have a freezer full of great hops but I am close to abandoning hoppy beers. Every time I brew with a decent amount of hops in a pale ale, IPA, or amber, it turns out vegetal. Here are the things I've explored...

Pellet dry hop
Leaf dry hop
Hop burst, no dry hop

Oxidation - No dryhop. Sealed before cold crash. Flush with co2 at every step.
Old hops - Used all fresh sealed, current year hops.
Yeast strains (1450, US05, 1968)
Hop debris - gelatin and cold crash
Clean bittering - switched to warrior for 60 min
pH and water chem - use brun water, tried sulfates at 50 and 150

In all cases, I get a nice hop flavor coming out of primary, but by the time I have it ready to serve it tastes muddled and vegetal. I brew solid Belgians and browns. Reading all these IPA recipes and new hop varieties is killing me. I see a minority of folks on the site experiencing the same problem, so I know I'm not alone but what are we missing?

I've seen a couple of posts like yours, and while I haven't had this problem in my own beers, I have noticed it in others beers... Both home brewed and commercial. Most recently and notably in Stone Enjoy By.

Have others verified the presence of this flavor in your beers? In my case, I am beginning to wonder if this flavor is perceived by and/or considered to be objectionable to everyone or just select people. Online reviews are raving about the latest Enjoy By, and I could barely drink it. In the case of one home brewed example, the guy tasting it next to me (not an experienced brewer/taster) didn't seem to know what I was talking about.

My hope is that by bumping this thread we might get a few others to chime in, and we might piece together the root cause. IME, this flavor seems to be associated with beers with heavy handed late hop additions and/or dry hopping with new varieties of hops.

I also want to add that I am not a newbie brewer or taster. (For reference, not to boast) I have won piles of medals in competitions and was formally an ABCP national level judge.

Adam

Tagz, you said you're moving away from hoppy beers? Have you brewed other beers that have not had this problem? I've had a few beers that I've brewed come out way too vegetal. I don't think the vegetal character is produced by the hops, however. I think it's due to DMS that is produced either by mild bacterial infection or too short of boil time / having a lid on while boiling. A few of my better beers that I've submitted to competitions have come back with feedback that they'd detected low levels of DMS, but were good on most other aspects (35 points on one) and some of my beers have been total DMS bombs that were not salvageable. So I hope that helps and i'd like to get to the bottom of this issue too!!! Good luck!

And1129,

I have detected a flavor similar to this in home brews. It is definitely not DMS. I have tasted a similar vegetal off flavor (usually in beginner beers) but this is different.

This vegetal is pungent and bitter almost like bitter greens. The "beginner beer" vegetal is sort of muddy & dirty.

Adam

tagz said:

I have a freezer full of great hops but I am close to abandoning hoppy beers. Every time I brew with a decent amount of hops in a pale ale, IPA, or amber, it turns out vegetal. Here are the things I've explored...

Pellet dry hop
Leaf dry hop
Hop burst, no dry hop

Oxidation - No dryhop. Sealed before cold crash. Flush with co2 at every step.
Old hops - Used all fresh sealed, current year hops.
Yeast strains (1450, US05, 1968)
Hop debris - gelatin and cold crash
Clean bittering - switched to warrior for 60 min
pH and water chem - use brun water, tried sulfates at 50 and 150

In all cases, I get a nice hop flavor coming out of primary, but by the time I have it ready to serve it tastes muddled and vegetal. I brew solid Belgians and browns. Reading all these IPA recipes and new hop varieties is killing me. I see a minority of folks on the site experiencing the same problem, so I know I'm not alone but what are we missing?

Click to expand...

So what' hops are you using? And with what recipes?

I've had the vegetal flavor from dry hopping too long with a high alpha hop

Also are you bottling / kegging??? Have you checked out that??? If you are kegging remove your post and see if you have any thing nasty in there

How is the beer vegetal? Does it taste herbal, grassy, or astringent? Those kind of flavors have to do with hop choice, hop amounts, and length of dry hopping. Could also be water.

If they taste muddled, oxidation of beta acids might be a problem. What is your procedure like? Do you dump all your kettle hops into the fermentor? Do you dry hop in primary, secondary, or keg? Warm or cold? What amounts and for how long?
Pale Ales/IPAs taste best when still quite young -if you sit on them for too long, they'll start tasting nasty.

After a lot of experimenting, I think I've isolated the problem to hop type. I have gotten the flavor when in batches that were heavy handed with Amarillo or Ahtanum. I have since brewed some single hop beers that have produced nice clean flavors: citra, mosaic, and centennial. I have also picked up the flavor in a few commercial beers with Amarillo late additions. And I do think it is a perception thing as Adam mentioned. I looked through a bunch of beer reviews for all Amarillo beers and while most of them mention citrus and orange flavors, a small percentage note the same herbal/earthy flavors that I get.

Just wanted to bump this and see if any more opinions have developed.

I recently brewed (2) IPAs (different recipes) that both tasted nice and juicy in the secondary. I dry hopped both heavily (3-4oz ea in 3.5 & 5 gal batches). After 4 days for one and 5 for the other, I bottled. Both tasted vegetal at bottling and after 2-3 wks, the taste hasn't chgd. It isn't undrinkable, but depressing compared to how it tasted prior to dry hopping.

Used cascade and citra dry hop in one and jade and citra on the other.

ETA: I cold crashed both batches prior to racking to secondary and dry hopping. Do you think adding the hops cold and letting it warm up to 68*F could cause the vegetal flavors?


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