Reduced Oxygen Pickup Without CO2

[Lacasse93]

I want to brew a NEIPA this weekend but have been struggling with limiting oxygen while still dry hopping in buckets. I know the setup is not ideal and I know gas and kegs are the way to go so what I am looking for here is best practices. I have always done 1 week in primary bucket or carboy and then transfer on day 7 to a second bucket/carboy until day 14 then bottle. With neipas I typically use buckets so that I can dry hop in a stainless steel tea ball (wont fit in carboys I have). I have only had one neipa really oxidize and turn that gross dark orange/brown color but I would like to get as close to perfection as I can without purging with CO2.

I am considering pushing up some practices to utilize fermentation. Instead of dry hopping at day 3 through 7, I was considering dry hopping on day 1 or 2 through day 5, transfer to secondary there with another dry hop charge til day 10 and bottling then. Checking for terminal gravity is also not ideal in this setup because it require more times opening the lid.

My question is, will 10 days fermenting (with a propped up Treehouse yeast) be enough time to go into bottles? I intend to ferment in the 70s for the first 5 days and let it then go to ambient (low to mid 60s in the basement) for the second 5 days. I am also curious if anyone has any tips or tricks to using buckets. I have been doing this awhile so I know the obvious ones but my expertise is just not in neipas so I am all ears on this style.

Thanks as always!

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, over the last three years roughly 70% of my annual ~180 gallon output has been neipas. I never use a "secondary vessel" - ever ever ever - as that's just an unnecessary penalty wrt O2 avoidance. Two rounds of free swimming pellets in the same carboy, usually 3 days post pitch for the first round then three days later for the second. Crash under light CO2 top-pressure then rack to kegs somewhere around Day 12 post-pitch.

For bottling the same scheme could be used - with the caveat one really needs to assure the FG is stable. That can be difficult depending on the hop strain(s) used as some exude enzymes that will chop up dextrins leading to hop creep and potential diacetyl issues. Imo one needs to run a recipe a couple of times to figure out the optimal DH schedule to avoid such maladies...

Cheers!