Maintaining Thick Haze In NEIPA styles

[acroporabrewer]

NEIPA are great beers to brew. Heavy mouth fill with a fruit forward finish. After a few sips of a perfected NEIPA, who would want to drink anything else. However, some of us have a great looking IPA that looks as juicy as OJ only to have it clear up in a few weeks. While others have been able to master this recipe to maintain the haze in a single keg for several months. But how do they do it? What is the difference? I've brewed a lot of hazy IPA for several years now with varying results. Over the years, some things have jumped out to me and I tend to not find the same results as others online.

I typically brew hazy ipas with base malts, flaked wheat, flaked oats, malted wheat, and malted oats. In my opinion, the malted oats contribute the most as far as maintaining a permanent haze for months and months. Everything that I read online says that flake wheat and flaked oats contribute to the haze but when I brew with just those two malts and base malt, my beers come out pretty clear. I've done this multiple times with the same results. However, the flaked wheat & oats do play in important role in the juiciness finish of a well done NEIPAs. I know there is more to it than just the grain bill. I've found that water chemistry is critical but that alone will not contribute to the haze. Yeast, hop additions, and water chemistry all play a role but I have always felt that malted oats contributes the most to the haze. I'm curious to know if anybody else is getting the same results with malted wheat/oats vs flaked wheat/oats.

 

[deadwolfbones]

The most effective haze producer I've personally found so far is unmalted/raw wheat berries. I use it at about 10% in my hazies and it adds a beautiful doughiness and perma-haze.

 

[Dgallo]

NEIPA are great beers to brew. Heavy mouth fill with a fruit forward finish. After a few sips of a perfected NEIPA, who would want to drink anything else. However, some of us have a great looking IPA that looks as juicy as OJ only to have it clear up in a few weeks. While others have been able to master this recipe to maintain the haze in a single keg for several months. But how do they do it? What is the difference? I've brewed a lot of hazy IPA for several years now with varying results. Over the years, some things have jumped out to me and I tend to not find the same results as others online.

I typically brew hazy ipas with base malts, flaked wheat, flaked oats, malted wheat, and malted oats. In my opinion, the malted oats contribute the most as far as maintaining a permanent haze for months and months. Everything that I read online says that flake wheat and flaked oats contribute to the haze but when I brew with just those two malts and base malt, my beers come out pretty clear. I've done this multiple times with the same results. However, the flaked wheat & oats do play in important role in the juiciness finish of a well done NEIPAs. I know there is more to it than just the grain bill. I've found that water chemistry is critical but that alone will not contribute to the haze. Yeast, hop additions, and water chemistry all play a role but I have always felt that malted oats contributes the most to the haze. I'm curious to know if anybody else is getting the same results with malted wheat/oats vs flaked wheat/oats.

You need to uses malted oat or malted wheat if your at a high percentage. Flaked grains are unmalted so they have large chain proteins. When you use flaked grain at a high amount, the proteins start to get attracted to each other and since they are already large chain proteins, they are molecularly heavy and drop out of suspension. Since the malting process alters the protein chains length and make them smaller, they are lighter in weight and stay in suspension.

 

[stickyfinger]

i switched to malted wheat from flaked. it works better for haze. also, if you have a beer that is losing its haze and flavor you can always invert the keg to revive it, but then you have to invert it frequently or it will clear very quickly.

 

[Transamguy77]

So when you say malted wheat using white wheat or torified wheat? I haven’t made a NEIPA yet and it’s on the list and I was going to used flaked wheat but if there is another option I’ll do that.

 

[stickyfinger]

You can try whatever you want of course, but a lot of people are having good luck with using malted products rather than flaked. I am just talking about wheat malt. I don't really know honestly if my wheat malt is white or red actually! I use Best Wheat Malt usually. I don't use torrified wheat usually. I tried it once and didn't think much of the beer (not necessarily b/c of the torr. wheat) and just stopped trying it.

Janish talks about using wheat malt in his new IPA book. I think he said you can use up to like 20% wheat malt for good haze and if you start going beyond that he thought that it actually could reduce haze. Perhaps there are enough larger proteins in wheat malt that when you start using more and more they come into play dropping out the haze (as Dgallo was discussing in reference to non-malted grains.)

My favorite recipe right now is very simple, 80% pale malt, 20% wheat malt. It's light and clean and allows hops to really come through. Haze is pretty good though it could be better I suppose with extended aging. I just drink off of my keg until I feel like it's losing some hop character and then start inverting the keg to stir up the hop compounds again. I dry hop after cold/soft crashing though, so I don't have a ton of yeast in the keg so it doesn't get yeasty tasting. Dgallo and others recommended that process, and I like it.

So when you say malted wheat using white wheat or torified wheat? I haven’t made a NEIPA yet and it’s on the list and I was going to used flaked wheat but if there is another option I’ll do that.

 

[Transamguy77]

Ok I’m going to try that then, I usually dry hop in the keg also, I never really thought to invert the keg though, might have to try that too.

 

[olotti]

On the flip side I use 1lb flaked oats and a small amount of white wheat and my beers consistently are hazy. I dryhop at day 3 during fermentation and day 7 before cold crashing. I should try the malted wheat though been meaning too.