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We've been operating a taproom for about a year now and have been canning for about a year and a half. We're observing significant differences between our hoppy beers on draft vs cans. Occasionally, the hoppy draft seems to be sharper and less aromatic with a muted flavor compared to the same beer in cans. We've ruled out hop burn as the culprit of the sharpness. This change is not after a matter of months but sometimes weeks or even a day or two after packaging. We don't experience this with any other styles. My first thought was it had to be D.O but our D.O levels in our cans (avg 20-30 ppb) and kegs (avg 3-5 PPB) don't seem to be a red flag. I find it odd that we enjoy the cans more than the draft, especially considering that D.O is much higher in the cans than the draft ( very little to no hop burn is present in the draft). Brite tank D.O is very low (2-5 PPB). We've pulled kegs off after tapping and we are not experiencing any increase in D.O through anything dispensing related. We run micromatic xtraflexmaster barrier tubing lines and clean the lines every other week. We push the beer with C02 at 12 psi to our draft lines. The kegs are stored at about 38F which we've come to find is the ideal compromise between preventing excessive foam breakout at the taps and the beer not being ice cold and therefore a bit more flavorful immediately upon pouring.
We clean each keg with a manual keg washer with an 02 push to remove residual beer, water rinse, caustic cycle, water rinse, PAA and then we bring the pressure up to 20 psi, push any residual sanitizer out 3 times and then purge the keg with c02 and verify that the D.O in the keg is 0 ppb and then pressurize the keg to ~14.5 psi to be counter pressure filled on packaging day. When we package hop forward beers we run a kegging setup on the back end of our Wild Goose canning line. We package about half of the canned beer first, switch to kegging and then can the remainder of the beer. We've come to find that this minimizes any hop burn in our draft beer. The quality of our draft beer sells the cans and when the draft is off can sales drop. It's really frustrating to have a great product and then watch it turn into a shadow of itself on our draft system. I'm scratching my head wondering why only the hop forward beers seem to be changing on draft with the D.O levels that we have.
I feel I've exhausted all of the obvious solutions and am desperate for any insight from the brewing community.
Thanks,
Mark Netzer
Brewer/Co-Founder | 413.454.5214
Great Awakening Brewing Company LLC
mark@greatawakeningbrewing.com
We clean each keg with a manual keg washer with an 02 push to remove residual beer, water rinse, caustic cycle, water rinse, PAA and then we bring the pressure up to 20 psi, push any residual sanitizer out 3 times and then purge the keg with c02 and verify that the D.O in the keg is 0 ppb and then pressurize the keg to ~14.5 psi to be counter pressure filled on packaging day. When we package hop forward beers we run a kegging setup on the back end of our Wild Goose canning line. We package about half of the canned beer first, switch to kegging and then can the remainder of the beer. We've come to find that this minimizes any hop burn in our draft beer. The quality of our draft beer sells the cans and when the draft is off can sales drop. It's really frustrating to have a great product and then watch it turn into a shadow of itself on our draft system. I'm scratching my head wondering why only the hop forward beers seem to be changing on draft with the D.O levels that we have.
I feel I've exhausted all of the obvious solutions and am desperate for any insight from the brewing community.
Thanks,
Mark Netzer
Brewer/Co-Founder | 413.454.5214
Great Awakening Brewing Company LLC
mark@greatawakeningbrewing.com
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