Shelf Stability

There are plenty of levers that brewers can pull to help their hop-forward beers taste fresher, for longer, out in the wild.

In IPAs, hops do the talking, but building the right platform gives them the best chance to have their say. Here, a few award-winning brewers share advice on creating that malt base—especially for the American and West Coast styles—plus, we look at a new base malt designed especially for IPA.

Brewers looking for greater efficiencies and longer-lasting hop aroma, among other things, can find several avenues to explore in recently published studies.

One of the most effective ways to increase shelf life is one of the oldest tricks in the book: package conditioning with a bit of fresh yeast. Yet there are pitfalls. Here’s how “the biggest natural-conditioning operation in the world” goes about it.

In the battle against staling, understanding your malt’s free amino nitrogen content is a tactic worth deploying.