I have a problem where most of my NEIPA's taste the same regardless of hops used. Help?

[OfficerJimLahey]

I can't tell if it's my water chemistry, or maybe I haven't done a whirlpool'd beer until recently when I got the equipment to do so, but i'll say 60% of the time my NEIPA's have the same flavor regardless of hops used. It's the "fruity but I can't tell what fruit" taste for all of them, very similar. I usually use golden promise, a little vienna, flaked oats and wheat. I have had some good success in changing flavors by shuffling hop additions (ie citra at 20 min, mosaic at 15 min, etc) vs blending everything (throwing equal amounts of hops at each addition), but it doesn't always work out. Has anyone had this experience? Any advice is greatly appreciated! Cheers

 

[Dgallo]

Are you using the same yeast strain with a big ester profile for all the beers?

 

[mkopec1]

Its all about balance IMO. Ive had some heavily hopped IPA before that just tasted and smelled like , well, hops. I did not get any lemon, or fruit, I just got hops.

 

[milo_leon]

There’s a lot of factors to consider so will need more info- what does your grain bill for a neipa look like? Do you adjust water chemistry? have you tried doing a hop stand with majority of the hops? What yeast and ferm temp?

For example, to get that juicy neipa I start with chloride/sulfate ratio in a 1.5:1-2:1 range for my water, grain bill typically looks like 65% pale malt, 15% flaked malt (oats, barley, etc), 15% white wheat, and 5% crystal, bitter up to 35 IBU or higher depending on Abv, and whirlpool the majority of hops at ~165 for 20-30 min, then I finish with Imperial Juice fermented around 66-68 degrees. Sometimes I dry hop, sometimes not depending on what flavor I want to present.

 

[RM-MN]

Most of what we perceive as flavor is in our nose, the aroma. To have aroma, the beer needs lots of aromatic oils and these are the first thing to boil off so any hop addition in the boil will lose a lot of these. To get a great aroma in your beer, use most of the hops after the boil ends and the beer is fermented. This dry hopping preserves most of the aromatic oils. Be very careful of oxidation as that destroys the aromatic oils too. That means no transfer to secondary and careful racking for bottling or kegging. For the best results a closed transfer to keg is preferred.