Author: Jake Huolihan
Homebrewing feels like an exercise in time management for me. Having a supportive wife allows me to brew perhaps more often than I suspect others might get to, but still, the process takes time, generally between 4-5 hours on my setup, making it difficult to play around with newer styles while stock of my go-tos. One such style that’s been causing quite a stir lately is Northeaster/New England-style Pale Ale (NEPA), known for its hazy appearance and “juicy” character. I tried a couple commercial versions of this style prior to the start of the so-called haze craze and, while tasty, wasn’t impressed enough to give them much thought.
But that was then. My interest in NEPA piqued as the apparent throwdown between the coasts that bookend this country intensified and people I respect began taking a stance. I knew I’d have to brew a batch for myself in order to formulate my own opinion on this budding and contentious style, but I wasn’t interested in dedicating an entire brew day to something I might not enjoy. So, in the spirit of exBEERimentation, I decided to go the Short & Shoddy route.
With zero experience brewing NEPA, I took recipe inspiration from folks I view as being experts on the style, namely bloggers Michael Tonsmeier of The Mad Fermentationist and Ed Coffey of Ales Of The Riverwards.
Short & Shoddy NEPA
Recipe Details
| Batch Size | Boil Time | IBU | SRM | Est. OG | Est. FG | ABV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.5 gal | 60 min | 105.6 IBUs | 3.5 SRM | 1.042 | 1.009 | 4.4 % |
| Actuals | 1.042 | 1.008 | 4.4 % | |||
Fermentables
| Name | Amount | % |
|---|---|---|
| Pale Malt, 2 row (Gambrinus) | 9 lbs | 78.26 |
| Oats, Flaked | 2 lbs | 17.39 |
| Cara-Pils/Dextrine | 8 oz | 4.35 |
Hops
| Name | Amount | Time | Use | Form | Alpha % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nugget | 28 g | 30 min | Boil | Pellet | 12.8 |
| Centennial | 28 g | 5 min | Boil | Pellet | 9.8 |
| Citra | 28 g | 5 min | Boil | Pellet | 12.5 |
| Jarrylo | 28 g | 5 min | Boil | Pellet | 15.9 |
| Mosaic | 28 g | 5 min | Boil | Pellet | 12.2 |
| Centennial | 28 g | 15 min | Aroma | Pellet | 9.8 |
| Citra | 28 g | 15 min | Aroma | Pellet | 12.5 |
| Jarrylo | 28 g | 15 min | Aroma | Pellet | 15.9 |
| Mosaic | 28 g | 15 min | Aroma | Pellet | 12.2 |
| Centennial | 28 g | 5 days | Dry Hop | Pellet | 9.8 |
| Citra | 28 g | 5 days | Dry Hop | Pellet | 12.5 |
| Jarrylo | 28 g | 5 days | Dry Hop | Pellet | 15.9 |
| Mosaic | 28 g | 5 days | Dry Hop | Pellet | 12.2 |
| Motueka (Keg Hop) | 60 g | 0 min | Dry Hop | Pellet | 7 |
Yeast
| Name | Lab | Attenuation | Temperature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thames Valley Ale (1275) | Wyeast Labs | 77% | 62°F - 72°F |
Download
| Download this recipe's BeerXML file |
***In the above recipe, the term “Aroma” refers to the Hop Stand***
Besides the grist consisting of a fairly large portion of protein-rich flaked oats, a water profile high in chloride is noted as contributing to the silky mouthfeel this styles is known for, and there’s some speculation it may also effect the hazy appearance. Starting with RO water, I added the amounts of calcium chloride (CaCl) and gypsum suggested by Bru’n Water to achieve a 2:1 chloride to sulfate ratio (200 ppm Cl, 100 ppm SO4).
The night before brewing, I readied my equipment and collected the full volume of brewing water, as I would be using the no sparge method for this batch. The following morning, my brew day began by heating the strike water then mashing in, the temperature settling a hair below my target of 152°F/67°C, at which point I set the timer for a brief 30 minutes.
In what seemed like no time, the timer was beeping so I performed a quick vorlauf and collected the full volume of sweet wort in my kettle.
I noticed the wort was extremely hazy, not full of grain bits, just not anywhere near as clear as I’m used to seeing. With my burner’s heat on high, a rolling boil was quickly reached and I again set my timer for a mere 30 minutes.
NEPA is generally expected to be less bitter than its left coast counterparts, though given the abbreviated boil length, I was forced to use quite a bit of hops in order to achieve the appropriate IBU.
As soon as the boil was complete, I quickly chilled the wort to 150°F/66°C, tossed in a hefty charge of hops for a 15 minute hop stand, then completed chilling the wort to my target fermentation temperature of 68°F/20°C before filling a carboy and placing it in my temperature controlled chamber. A hydrometer measurement revealed the wort was at 1.045 OG, putting my brewhouse efficiency for his batch at 62%, 6-8% lower than I typically get.
Confession– I dose nearly every batch I make with pure O2, it’s become a thoughtless brew day task for me, and so it went with this batch. Certainly not the shoddiest of methods, even if it had little noticeable impact on the finished beer. Meh. I pitched the swollen pack of yeast I’d smacked a few hours earlier.
Fermentation appeared to have taken off as expected by the following day.
According to many NEPA advocates, something special happens when dry hops are added during active fermentation through a process called biotransformation. For more on this, I highly recommend Scott Janish’s fantastic article, Examination of Studies: Hopping Methods and Concepts for Achieving Maximum Hop Aroma and Flavor. Suffice to say, certain yeasts seem to interact with hops in such a way to produce the highly sought after “juicy” character said to be quintessential to NEPA. With a thick kräusen still present, I added a large dry hop charge to the beer at 3 days post-pitch. It took another 2 days before fermentation appeared finished, which I confirmed by taking a hydrometer measurement showing the beer had dropped to 1.008 FG.
With no off-flavors noticeable in the hydrometer sample, I cold crashed the beer to near freezing where it stayed for just under a week due to my busy summer schedule. Skipping my typical gelatin fining step, I kegged the beer exactly 2 weeks after it was brewed, dangling a CO2 flushed bag of hops in the keg as I’ve read so many NEPA brewers do.
The beer was burst carbonated overnight then left to stabilize for a couple days before I served them to unsuspecting tasters. If anything, I think I at least nailed the appearance.
| IMPRESSIONS |
I have no way of knowing how close my beer comes to “classic” examples since I’ve little access to commercial or even homebrewed versions, so my evaluation of this beer really ought to be taken with a grain of salt.
This beer was really good!
Despite my anti-haze bias, I seriously enjoyed this beer. I went the short & shoddy route in an admitted attempt to prove to myself this newfangled “style” was gimicky garbage and didn’t really belong. I judged a book by its cover, presuming it would taste like the murky toilet water it appeared to be. But it didn’t. I loved it! At one point, I compared my NEPA to a few prominent West Coast IPAs from respected breweries and was easily able to tell them apart based on aroma alone, even in a blind triangle. I wouldn’t say I perceived the hop character to be necessarily more intense in my homebrewed NEPA, just different, and not in a way I would call “juicy,” but that could be a matter of not knowing what to look for. The commercial IPAs had more of a caramel character to my palate, while my NEPA came across as quite a bit drier. I didn’t personally pick up the silky mouthfeel so many claim is key to this style, which I figured could be a function of the lower OG and FG. I initially wondered if the strong hop presence hid any yeast character, as I didn’t perceive any of the esters I expected from the Thames Valley ale strain, then it struck me that maybe this had to do with the whole biotransformation thing. Regardless, the beer was so good and so easy to drink.
What Did Others Think?
I served this beer over the course of about a week to friends and neighbors in informal settings, which makes me reluctant to say any of the information gathered from them is at all definitive. I was curious if people who were unaware the beer was a NEPA would note any of the apparent nuances of the style. The terms “silky” and “juicy” were used by exactly zero tasters, which again could be a product of the fact those aren’t descriptors us non-NE’rs are all too familiar with. I made note of some of the comments tasters made:
Super hoppy
Fruity
Really fucking good
Lime
In terms of the short & shoddy aspect of this beer, not a single person described it in any way that would indicate poor brewing processes, suggesting to me the truncated methods used to make this NEPA had little if any negative impact on the finished beer.
| CONCLUSION |
This batch was neither as short nor as shoddy as previous batches we’ve written about, but the methods used were a pretty far cry from what I typically do, enough so to cause me some anxiety. Yet in the end, I made beer, and it was good, more so than I expected. I’d say these results add more support to the idea that certain process components accepted as required may not be as necessary as we were taught, at least on the homebrew scale using modern ingredients.
My short & shoddy brew came not without some downsides, namely the hit to my brewhouse efficiency, which has been a consistent observation across every short & shoddy batch so far. This is certainly something I’ll consider when planning similar batches in the future.
For me, the biggest takeaway from this experience had to do with water chemistry, a variable I’ve been increasingly interested in. Compared to the types of hoppy beers I’m used to drinking, which I perceive as more sharply bitter and mouth-coating, my NEPA was much less abrasive with a hop character that seemed to sit in my mouth without clinging to my tongue, like a pillow of fruitiness. Perhaps this is what’s meant by “soft bitterness” and “juicy” hop character? I’m not sure, but what I am sure of is that this beer shifted by perspective on NEPA, I’m now a fan and will definitely be brewing more in the future!
For more on NE-Style Pale Ale/IPA, read Dan Paris’ latest post at his InBounds Brewing blog!
If you have experience with NEPA or Short & Shoddy brewing, please share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Support Brülosophy In Style!
All designs are available in various colors and sizes on Amazon!
Follow Brülosophy on:
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM
If you enjoy this stuff and feel compelled to support Brulosophy.com, please check out the Support Us page for details on how you can very easily do so. Thanks!
25 thoughts on “Short & Shoddy | New England Pale Ale (NEPA)”
If I am reading this right your water treatment was opposite of what is usually used for hoppy beers. I know I have always read that you want a 3:1 Sulfate to Chloride ratio to bring out the hoppy bitterness where you have a 2:1 Chloride to Sulfate ration which would typically be used for maltier styles ?
Switching the water profile to the chloride side of the ratio is a specific aspect of the NE style. The other core aspects: oats and fruity/citrus hop character.
Not sure oats are ‘core’. While many breweries use them, the defining brewer of the style largely does not. Hill farmstead
High chloride levels are often cited as lending NEPA some of their silky mouthfeel. Also personally think it lends much haziness.
To be clear, I believe the increased haze from a beer brewed with elevated levels of chloride is due to the fact that chloride inhibits yeast’s ability to flocculate as well as it is known to do so in a beer with a more balanced water profile. You see a lot of NEPA’s being brewed with English yeast strains to enhance their fruit-forward hop bills…what do we typically know about English strains? They are flocculant as hell, right? So the elevated chloride levels seem to interfere with the yeast’s ability to flocculate.
Many people making NE IPAs are using less sulfate. This includes either lower amounts of sulfate but still higher than the chloride, or even equal parts of each. I have used only chloride and found the resulting beer to be delicious as well. It is my opinion from several brews that I have done that sulfate makes a beer much drier. I don’t think it necessarily makes have a greater hop aroma or flavor.
When you guys do a short and shoddy exbeeriment, do you adjust the hop amounts to account for the reduced boil time or do you leave it as if it were a normal 60 minute boil recipe?
I can’t speak for the other short shoddy but I did build this recipe from the ground up so the 30 min addition was built as 30 min. My hunch is yes everyone is adjusting any bittering additions for 30 min
I’ve brewed a few NE APAs and IPAs. In the past I’ve used a 1:2 chloride to sulfate ratio, the beer still needs to have a pronounced hop character. I have one in the primary right now where I tried a 1:1 ratio. IMO the soft mouthfeel really comes from the flaked adjuncts.
Most professional brewers Chico or 1318. One brewery re-brewed their flagship IPA with 1318 and started selling it under a different name. My preference is to use an estery British strain. I’ve had luck with 1084 and 1187. Mashing at 152 with a relatively high attenuating yeast was a good call to make sure the beer didn’t finish too dry.
I’m actually quite happy my LHBS was out of 1318. I would use 1275 again in a heartbeat great yeast for this beer.
Very nice!! Glad to see consistent results with this method. Have you considered a 15 minute mash batch sparge/mash out with the 30 minute sac? I think this may level your brewhouse efficiency and still somewhat glide into your ‘short n shoddy’ methodology.
At any rate, I believe there’s a few points that can be taken from the method to get the best of many worlds, I believe a middle-ground has yet to be found.
What I am most interested in is how you’ve got the sterile siphon starter hooked up to that big mouth carboy. I recently picked up a couple of Fermonster’s and am looking to do something similar but haven’t come up with a good way just yet.
Haha it’s kind of a pain. I’ll keep some star San in the tube with the QD on when I initially insert the siphon into the carboy. Unscrew a little to drop the star San (need a decent size hose to create enough siphon). Then screw onto the qd once siphon starts. That has worked for me fwiw.
I have had very good luck with fermonster transferring via sterile siphon. I realized I could put the large carboy cap right over a medium universal bung and it fit nicely. You may need to use a screw driver to get it in there nice and snug. So then I needed to find a way to get air into the vessleI drilled a 3/8″ hole in the bottom of the bung beside the center hole. I positioned the air hole under the second tube off of the carboy cap, filled my Fermonster with water. Then I stuck the bung in the hole with the sterile siphon installed. I blew into the tube and the water began to flow out of the hose just like it was attached to a carboy. Here are a few pictures I took http://imgur.com/a/hCMn0
When I made my NE IPA a couple months back I ended up using the 1318 right out of the tank from the brewery I work at. Turned out fantastic. Also in an experiment I made a porter with the same yeast hoping for the “creaminess” while still being a little dry.
I’d be interested in some testing of higher oats concentrations. You may not have enough oats for enough mouthfeel with such a relatively low OG. I did an IPA with 50% flaked wheat and 50% Pils a few months ago that had a really nice mouthfeel.
Just kicked a keg of an Indian Session Lager I keep playing with. (38 IBU OF 1.045 Always different hops) 15-30 min mashes and 15 min boils. Even use Amylase Enzyme added with yeast to achieve further conversion during lag time of dissolved but not yet converted starches. Also assists with complete attenuation which I used to struggle with when using short mashes. Beer tastes great every time. (I’m a national experienced judge and club members all agree)
Speed Brewing works great!!!
Curious why you perform a vorlauf while using the mash-in-a-bag? I eliminated that step after I got my bag.
Could possibly be eliminated, mainly out of habit
There’s been studies on it – it’s a preference technique, it does change the profile of the beer but not enough, really.
I wonder if you would still lose as much efficiency if you recirculated during the mash?
I recirculate. Doing so, I reliably hit 65% efficiency when I no-sparge and 70% when I batch sparge.
Just finished a short/shoddy inspired NE Pale last night. Brewed and cleaned up in ~3hrs. Hit 62% exactly with BIAC & No-sparge. Same base recipe but used Citra/Mosaic/HallertauBlanc and Wyeast 1318. Can’t wait to try it. Keep up the great work!
Awesome to hear! Hope it turns out great
So delicious…closed xfer (pushed with CO2) from plastic carboy to 1st keg/dry hop…closed xfer from dry hop keg to serving keg. Burst carbed @ 30psi for 1 day and amazing hop aroma/flavor with very little lingering bitterness Thanks again!