Hop flavor vs. cold crashing and gelatin

[Bosh]

Am on my way home from a homebrew meeting. I`ve had more than a few beers so please excuse any typos.

For the theme of this meeting everyone was assigned to brew a 5 gallon batch of American Pale Ale with 3 oz of Summit and 3 oz of Columbus. We had a bunch of different takes on the style from a more traditional one, to a strong one with lots of honey, to my malty one (90% vienna, 4.5% carared, 4.5% victory, 1% caraaroma). But the best brew of the night was a scaled-down NE style IPA that went like this:
-9% or so rolled oats.
-89% or so wayerman pale ale malt.
-Just enough aciduated malt for PH correction.
-Half the hops at flameout, the other half used for a 3-day dry hop. No hops during the boil.
-4.5% or so ABV

The batch was split so that half was bottled without any special treament and half was bottled after cold crashing and fining with gelatin.

And the difference was night and day. The beer that was cold crash and fined with gelatin was a lot clearer and very crisp (almost cider-like) but had MASSIVELY less hop flavor and aroma. The differnce was stark and utterly unmistakable.

Makes me very leery about cold crashing or fining with gleatin any hoppy beer in the future.

Anyone else done a split batch experiment along these lines?

For whatever it`s worth I thought that my beer (malty grainbill, huge 180-degree hop stand, no dry hops, cold crashed and fined with gleatin) was quite tasty but didn`t have as much hop flavor or aroma as the half of the split batch that wasn`t cold crashed and fined with gleatin but more flavor and aroma than the one that was.

 

[johnsant]

I cold crash all my brews but do not use gelatin and I get good flavor and smell from my Hops. Can't really say why the difference with those two beers! Maybe you want to ask the person who brewed them to get his take on it.

 

[Bosh]

I cold crash all my brews but do not use gelatin and I get good flavor and smell from my Hops. Can't really say why the difference with those two beers! Maybe you want to ask the person who brewed them to get his take on it.

Guy said he thought the beers pretty much spoke for themselves. Like I said, split batch so everything was identical except one was cold crashed and gelatin fined and the other wasn`t and the beers were different in an unmistakable way.

He doesn`t know if the difference is due to cold crashing or gelatin, I`d agree with you that cold crashing doesn`t seem to get in the way of great hop flavor so maybe it`s the gelatin making the difference because something certainly was.

 

[Yooper]

Guy said he thought the beers pretty much spoke for themselves. Like I said, split batch so everything was identical except one was cold crashed and gelatin fined and the other wasn`t and the beers were different in an unmistakable way.

He doesn`t know if the difference is due to cold crashing or gelatin, I`d agree with you that cold crashing doesn`t seem to get in the way of great hop flavor so maybe it`s the gelatin making the difference because something certainly was.

Yes, that is what I've been told. Finings "pull" out the yeast and larger particles by binding to them, and it's not a huge stretch to assume that happens with hops oils.

If you look at some of the yeast strains' descriptions on White Labs and Wyeast's website, they'll tell you that some strains impact hoppiness in the final beer due to their high attenuation as yeast supposedly "pulls" out hops oils when it flocculates so it's not a large leap to assume that would happen with finings as well.

The fix there would be to dryhop after fining.

I don't use finings, except for whirlfloc in the kettle, since I want a vegetarian friendly beer (as most people wouldn't expect meat by-products in their beer) so I can't say that I've had hands-on experience with it.

 

[stickyfinger]

i experienced similar on a pale ale. brulosophy contends there is no difference though. still meed to do a side by side

 

[Epos7]

I'm very curious about this result, as I can't seem to produce much hop flavor/aroma in my beers whether I use gelatin finings or not. I have yet to try omitting the cold crash.

One theory - the technique used to brew this particular beer could have made the difference in the two beers more pronounced. Since there were no hops added during the boil, I suspect very little isomerization occurred. Once the alpha acids are isomerized into iso-alpha acids they are more soluble in water, which could make them more difficult to knock out of solution via finings or cold crashing. Since the amount of iso-alpha acids in this brew was likely very low, the fining and cold crashing could have knocked the vast majority of hops out of solution, vs a more typical beer with a higher degree of isomerization.

Very interesting!

 

[stickyfinger]

cold crash doesn't hurt you if you do it for a few days only. i do it all of the time to get the bit hop particles to drop before racking. isomerized hop acids are not the flavor component, just the bittering component. i really think the yeast holds onto some hop flavors, and when it drops, you lose some. maybe hop particles are clinging to the yeast too. some people love that intense, murky, hoppy style and some prefer the pure hop oil flavor that a clearer beer gives. i like both but really love a super fresh, yeasty, cloudy beer that has all of the hop flavors in it.

 

[stickyfinger]

it also seems to me that once you carbonate a beer, it will lose some hop flavor as well. i think more of the hop particles, yeast and some hop oils perhaps drop out when carbonation is added.

 

[Desertbrewer]

Lets not forget that cold crashing introduces a lot of oxygen to beer; oxygen is pulled into the fermentor with a drop in temp, and oxygen dissolves into solution much easier at lower temps as opposed to 70F.

I'd imagine oxidation would have much greater an overall impact on perceived hop aroma/flavor then something like finings at the molecular level.

 

[stickyfinger]

Oxygen coming in after chilling is definitely not ideal. I think you are wrong about the oxygen from cold crashing vs finings though. Finings had a very pronounced negative effect on the super hoppy beer I used them in. It has been the biggest negative effect in any hoppy beer I've made.