I came up with a recipe as a homage to Surly’s “Todd the Axeman” ale. They use all Golden Promise and a combo of Citra and Mosaic in a 2:1 ratio. I used all Maris Otter and flipped the hops ratio in the opposite direction, using twice as much Mosaic as Citra, since I had all of those ingredients on hand.
Preliminary results are really good, except that it’s really slow to carb. I cold-crashed for a couple days, then racked to a keg on top of 4.5 oz of pellets in a nylon stocking. I like to keg hop at room temp for one week, and during that week I had the gas hooked up too.
Now it’s been in the kegerator and cold for a week, carbing alongside a saison and Palmer’s Elevenses. The other two beers are carbing nicely, but the IPA is still very minimally-carbed, even though it had an extra week to carb at room temps while dry hopping.
I’ve heard a hypothesis that IPA’s are slow to carb due to hop oils floating on the surface in the keg. What do you guys think? Have you seen that your hoppy beers are slower to carb?
I have not seen that. Any possibilty that particular keg is leaking? Also the “hop oils floating on the surface” claims seem suspicious to me since they are soluable in the beer. Otherwise that last pint would be one aromatic sucker. My $0.02
That was my feeling, too. Never noticed it, even on an IPA with a lb of hops. But I’m not saying it’s not possible either, with all the variance in equipment and techniques.
I don’t think hops and carbonation have anything to do with each other. At least I’ve never observed anything like that. And I find that hypothesis hard to justify. The oils might affect foam stand, but should have nothing to do with carbonation. And even if the oils did affect foam, the polyphenols in the hops tend to create more and longer lasting foam.
the theory of it makes sense to me, and I’ve had a couple IPAs over the years that when I tested the head pressure with my regulator, they were seemingly overcarbonated (i.e. over 15) yet actually very lightly carbonated when poured. there was visible slickness on the top. when that has happened, I just hooked it up to 25-30 and rocked it back and forth a bunch - problem solved.
I guess an easy way to test this would be to try and force carbonate a coke bottle of water with some oil poured on top. i’ll do it if I get around to it, but to be honest my motivation is pretty low since I don’t really care.
are you sure you seated the lid of your keg really well?
And as for the hop oil hypothesis, I got nuthin, but I have had a couple beers over the years with gelatin in them that refused to carb up until I shook them…Almost like a layer of gelatin coagulated on the surface of the gas/beer interface and wouldn’t allow the gas to permeate the beer.
Well, this beer is very tasty, so I’ve been pulling a few samples even though I know it’s undercarbed. I think Pinnah said he kind of likes his IPAs undercarbed for some reason.
Now it’s starting to carb up a bit. I did give it just a bit of rocking yesterday but nothing too hardcore. Even with an undercarbed beer, I like to crack the tap just a tiny bit and give it a nice head of foam to top off the pint. Mmmmmm… hops.
In my experience the hypothesis is sometimes correct. I very recently again experienced a very slow carb time for an IPA, in both kegs carbed at identical pressure and temp.