Since opening in 2016, North Park Beer in San Diego has won national recognition (and a pile of medals) for its beers, especially those that feature big hop aroma and flavor—West Coast IPAs, cold IPAs, hazy IPAs, West Coast pilsners, and more. Going back to his homebrewing days, founder and head brewer Kelsey McNair has had a reputation for trying and embracing innovative techniques and new products—anything to advance his goal of fully saturating his beers in delicious hop flavor.
In this 62-minute video course—included in your All Access subscription—McNair reveals his current thinking, most effective methods, and useful tips for capturing a full spectrum of hop aroma and flavor in beer. Among the highlights:
- envisioning your recipe as a series of modules
- selecting a malt base that “gets out of the way” of the hops
- adding just a bit of dehusked Carafa to get more color in West Coast IPA
- how hopping choices might affect water-chemistry choices, and vice versa
- making pH adjustments throughout the process to brighten and improve hop flavor
- avoiding thiolized yeast strains but sometimes adding an enzyme to promote hop expression
- a range of considerations when selecting hops
- combining different hop formats with flowable products for layers of hop saturation
- specific whirlpool, dip-hopping, and dry-hopping techniques
- how North Park halved its total packaged oxygen (TPO) by canning more slowly
- the importance of collabs and feedback to innovation
And much more, including a wide range of specific process tips to achieve and preserve the kind of flavor saturation you want in your hop-forward beers.
Want access to more video courses like this one? All of our subscriptions come with a 100 percent money-back guarantee. Get your All Access subscription to tap into a library of more than 100 full courses on a diverse range of brewing topics. If you don’t love it, we’re happy to refund your money.
