I’m taking to writing this blog post after the inspiration of conversations from a monthly RIBS meeting. My goal here is to highlight what I am working on, struggling with, successes and failures in order to hear from those with more experience in response, and maybe help those in a similar situation.
For the past year I have brewed, pretty much, the same NEIPA recipe. Typically, each batch I will change one or two things and make notes into Beersmith. My goal is to refine my recipes and my process. One focus has been on my kegging process. When experimenting with hopping rates, timing, etc. the common obstacle for me is clogged ball lock connectors. The amount of dry hops put into a NEIPA consistently clog up my connectors. I have tried increasing cold crash from 24 hours to 48. This helped slightly
Unclogging and sanitizing and putting the connectors back into the rotation has “worked” but is very tedious, and frustrating. I’m also nervous about the opportunity for infection, introducing oxygen, and wasted beer (very minimal but still).