Split-Batch NEIPA: One Brew Day, Three Dry-Hop Combinations

Several years ago, my son and I took a tour on the Portland, Maine brew bus, stopping at several breweries and sampling their wares. One juicy, delicious IPA stood out — Bissell Brothers Substance. It was our first experience with the New England IPA style, and both of us have been hooked ever since. Apparently we weren't alone: Bissell has rapidly grown into a major Maine craft brewery, and the NEIPA style has taken the world by storm.

Ever since, I've been attempting to perfect my own NEIPA recipe and technique, and I think the beer I brew keeps getting better. A big part of that improvement has been adopting larger batch brewing — splitting the batch and varying one condition at a time. I've tried different yeasts, adjusted the hop schedule, and sampled various hop varieties. At the end of the brew day, I end up with three kegs of different beer. I choose my favorite, and adapt the next brew session based on what I've learned. The recipe and process below represent my current favorite procedure.

Grain Bill & Yeast

This grain bill, combined with the brew-in-a-bag procedure described below, results in 15 gallons of wort with a starting gravity of about 1.058. After fermentation, expect the finished beer to land around 6.3% ABV.

The Hops

Hop preference is personal. I've noticed that many of the commercial NEIPAs I enjoy most feature Citra and Mosaic, so that's become my base hopping schedule.

Thirty years ago, when I began homebrewing, conventional wisdom held that late additions and dry hopping in particular only affected a finished beer's aroma. Based on my own experimentation, that's utterly false. Lately, the one factor I've been changing between my three split batches on brew day is simply dry hopping each with a different hop variety — and in my experience, the difference in the finished, served beer is remarkable.

The Secret Sauce Hop Schedule

I start the full 18-gallon batch (which boils down to about 15 gallons) with identical hops. The first two hop additions land around 33 IBUs of bitterness, which tastes about right to me, and the hop stand adds a bit more on top of that. I've found that about 3 ounces of a high-alpha hop during the hop stand yields a well-balanced beer.

• In 17 gallons of wort (the full batch), boil ¾ oz Mosaic pellets for 60 minutes
• Then boil 2½ oz Mosaic pellets for 20 minutes
• Turn off the heat and add 1 oz Citra and 2 oz Mosaic — steep for 45 minutes
• Cool with an immersion coil, then split the cooled wort into three 5-gallon fermenters

The only difference between the three finished beers is the dry hop. I think you'll be amazed by how different they end up tasting and smelling — and pleased by all three.

My Full Brewing Procedure

1. Prep the yeast starters: Two days before brew day, prepare three one-liter yeast starters, splitting the liquid yeast among the three beakers. Let the starter cultures ferment and build up more yeast.
2. Crack the grain: On brew day, crack 30 lbs of two-row malted barley in a grain mill, along with an additional pound of CaraPils malt. Set aside 3 lbs of flaked oats.
3. Heat and treat the water: Heat 18 gallons of water to 159 °F in a 20-gallon brew pot. I have very soft water, so I adjust with gypsum, calcium chloride, Epsom salts, and baking soda to get a chloride-forward NEIPA water profile — various online brewing water calculators can help you do the same.
4. Mash in: Turn off the heat and insert a brew bag into the pot. Dump in the cracked malted barley and flaked oats, stir the mash, and take a temperature reading — mine typically starts around 157 °F at this point. Cover the pot and wrap it (a sleeping bag works) to hold temperature. Mash for an hour; in my cold Maine garage, the final mash temperature is often around 150–153 °F after the hour.
5. Lift out the grain bag: Raise the brew bag out of the pot (I use a pulley), leaving the hot wort ready to boil. Since my brew pot only holds 20 gallons, I often top off the wort with a couple more gallons of water to land at 15 gallons after the grain has absorbed some of it.
6. Bring the wort to a boil: Turn on the burner and heat the wort to a boil, letting the suspended grain bag drip into the pot as it heats. I also immerse my cleaned copper wort chiller in the boiling wort to sanitize it, and just leave it in place for the boil.
7. First hop addition: Add ¾ oz Mosaic hops as the wort reaches a boil, using a mesh hop spider to keep them contained.
8. Second hop addition: After boiling the first charge for 40 minutes, add the 2½ oz Mosaic charge to the hop spider and boil another 20 minutes — total boil time is one hour.
9. Hop stand: Turn off the burner and circulate cold water through the wort chiller until the wort hits 185 °F. Add the final charge — 1 oz Citra and 2 oz Mosaic — at 185 °F, then turn off the cooling water and let it steep for 45 minutes.
10. Cool the wort: Turn the cooling water back on and chill the wort down to 70 °F.
11. Split and pitch: Split the cooled wort into three 5-gallon fermenters and pitch one yeast starter into each.
12. Ferment & purge kegs: Ferment at room temperature for 3–4 days. I use the CO₂ generated during fermentation to purge oxygen from my sanitized kegs.
13. Dry hop each fermenter: After 3–4 days, once fermentation slows, add the unique dry hop charge to each fermenter using small, boiled muslin hop bags — leave plenty of room in each bag, since hops expand significantly once wet. Use "Down Under," "Choker," and "Tropical" hop combinations above for fermenters 1, 2, and 3. I like adding dry hops before fermentation is fully finished so any oxygen introduced gets scrubbed out by the remaining fermentation gases (some also credit "biotransformation" of the hops during active fermentation). Let fermentation finish out — no more airlock bubbling — which typically takes 6–7 days total.
14. Transfer to keg: Use compressed CO₂ to do a closed-system transfer from each fermenter into a CO₂-purged keg. NEIPA is notoriously sensitive to oxygen exposure — I've found this to be true in practice, and take great care to avoid oxygen pickup once fermentation is done.
15. Carbonate and serve: Force carbonate and serve. You'll be amazed how different the three beers taste and smell, purely from the dry hop differences.

Final Thoughts

Time is precious, and I love that this brew-in-a-bag 15-gallon recipe yields three kegs of finished NEIPA instead of just one. I also love getting three different-tasting beers from minimal extra effort, just by altering the dry hop varieties. I keep experimenting with different dry hops — and sometimes different boil hops — to change things up and avoid boredom.

Here's what I've learned matters most for NEIPA quality, based on my own experimenting:

1. The yeast: Discovering the difference Burlington yeast makes was a game changer for getting close to the NEIPA style.
2. Dialing back the IBUs: Many of my first attempts were simply too bitter. Moving toward late hop additions and hop stands got me to juicy beer.
3. Kegging over bottling: In my experience, a bottling bucket with conditioning sugar and a siphon results in lousy NEIPA, likely from oxygen exposure that's nearly impossible to avoid when bottling at home. Moving to CO₂-purged kegs and closed-system transfers improved my quality dramatically. Some styles are less oxygen-sensitive, but if you love NEIPA, I think kegging is required.
4. The hops: Simply dry hopping with different varieties leads to dramatically different tasting and smelling beers.