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What styles are and are not recomended for bottling?

jasonandmollyb

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I'm about to create my first recipe for my first brew, and was all set to do a NEIPA, when I discovered that it is generally not a good candidate for bottling due its susceptibility to oxidation.  I then saw the same was true for wheat beers (my second choice). More investigating and I found that Pale Ale (my third choice) is in the same boat.  So what IS a style that can hold up well to bottling? 

That also leads me to the question, what is actually reacting so badly to the oxygen?  I've read that excessively hoppy beers suffer, but what quantity of hops is considered excessively hoppy?  Is it just anything dry hopped, or is it more a quantity issue, rather than how it's used?  Wheat beers don't typically have a lot of hops, so what it the commonality?

I will likely get into kegging eventually, but for now bottling is the option available to me.  I would really appreciate any thoughts on what a good guideline is for bottling and styles.

Jason
 
bottle them all. don't let someone tell you that you can't.

use oxygen barrier caps, thatll help a bit. will a neipa get some oxy effects? sure, but who cares. If you're trying to brew competition winners and 40pt+ beers you'll be fighting some issues, otherwise, bottle away. My first beer long long ago was a wheat, my second beer was a pale ale, both bottled, both tasted great. looking back I'm sure i'd find dozens of faults with them, but they were damn tasty and it made me happy to say I BREWED THEM.

By the way, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale? Bottle Conditioned.
most belgian styles, bottle conditioned.
some of the rarest and "best" beers in the world? bottle conditioned.
 
Bottle everything and keg most everything.

I believe sours, Belgians and any farmhouse beers along with German wheats should be bottle conditioned or refermented in the bottle as I feel it's part of the style. But that's just my preference.

As for NEIPA's, you'll definitely get a degradation in appearance when bottle conditioning (probably west coast IPAs too, but not as much). I think this is why you see so many of them canned. I can't think of a single one that is bottled, to be honest. I'm sure someone here can point one out. They'll still taste good, even though it might not look as appealing.

My NEIPAs were going from bright yellow and orange to dull brown murky looking within a month from bottling. Method is also part of it, probably. Sat in primary for a week or two, then got racked onto dry hops in secondary for another week or two, then in the bottling bucket for the amount of time it took to bottle.

Because of this, I bought a fairly priced counter pressure filler. Now I force carb everything in the keg (except for the styles I mentioned above), and use the counter pressure filler to fill my bottles. So far so good. If it allows me to extend the appearance life for a bit longer, I'm happy. Plus I'm not waiting the two weeks to carbonate. I'm also minimizing oxygen this way. The keg now becomes secondary for me--I'll dry hop in there or put whatever additions I need.

jasonandmollyb said:
That also leads me to the question, what is actually reacting so badly to the oxygen?  I've read that excessively hoppy beers suffer, but what quantity of hops is considered excessively hoppy?  Is it just anything dry hopped, or is it more a quantity issue, rather than how it's used? 

I don't know the answer to this question. I've read that it's susceptible hop particles that are floating in beer (from dry-hopping during primary fermentation), which I don't think makes sense if the yeast is scrubbing the oxygen out (but I don't know the science behind this). I've also read, it's from the excessive amount of oats (up to 20% of the grain bill!) that is susceptible. I think for the home brewer it's probably also the multiple dry hop charges after fermentation. You're probably re-introducing oxygen in a carboy or bucket unless you're able to purge your hops or fermenter before adding. Plus when you're bottling, it's just sitting in your bottling bucket, exposed.

I think the quantity of hops being excessive is really your personal preference. I think the most I've done is 1.5lbs of hops for a NEIPA. That's a total hop bill. I don't imagine that I would push that. It was pretty intense.

This is also coming from someone who just made a 200ibu-ish IPA so I wouldn't be surprised if I pulled a 2lb NEIPA off in the future.
 
To clarify the 200ibu IPA--I used a hop shot for bittering, so I was still under my 1.5lb hop use threshold.
 
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