Kelsey McNair
North Park’s Guide to Achieving Fully Saturated Hop Flavor
Brewing Course
Kelsey McNair, founder and head brewer at North Park Beer in San Diego, shares the thinking and methods behind his award-winning approach to fully saturating beers in hop flavor.
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.
Featuring:
Kelsey McNair
Founder + Head Brewer, North Park
Sessions
1. Introduction | The Origins of Hop-Saturated Recipes
Learn how Kelsey deconstructs his favorite commercial examples and treats recipes as interchangeable modules to dial in specific flavor profiles.
2. Malt | Building a Base that “Gets out of the Way”
From pale West Coast bases to Hazy wheat blends, Kelsey breaks down grist construction. Learn to manage FAN for healthy fermentation, adjust color without flavor, and mitigate hop creep with dextrose.
3. Water | Chemistry that Supports the Hops
Kelsey reveals North Park’s specific chloride-to-sulfate ratios and explains how to modulate water profiles to accentuate different hop characters and bitterness levels.
4. pH | Making Adjustments, from Mash to Fermentation
Learn to target specific pH levels in the mash and boil for a snappy, hop-forward finish. Plus, Kelsey explains his strategy for limiting starting gravity and feeding sugar later to maintain yeast health.
5. Yeast | Controlling for Clean, Bright Hop Expression
Kelsey details North Park’s yeast preferences, including how to use enzymes with 34/70 lager yeast to unlock fruitier biotransformation. Learn why he avoids thiolized strains and how to manage temps and yeast drops for cleaner flavor.
6. Hops | Products, Pellets & Process Tips
Kelsey dives into the strategy behind layering flavor. Learn how to use flowable extracts for saturation, manage cohumulone in T-90 pellets, and optimize dry hopping via spunding and recirculation.
7. Quality | Limiting Oxygen
Oxygen is the enemy of hop aroma. Kelsey shares essential strategies for protecting fragile beers during transfer and packaging to ensure your hop character survives the journey to the glass.
8. Innovation | Never Stop Learning
Learn why North Park prioritizes "making better beer, consistently" over strict consistency. Kelsey discusses how he uses collaborations, new ingredients, and customer feedback to drive constant improvement.
9. Conclusion | Last Word
Keep learning, think outside the box, and have fun with it!
10. Recipe: North Park Sorta Mostly Dead
Courtesy of Kelsey McNair of North Park Beer in San Diego, here’s a homebrew-scale recipe for their new-school, double dry-hopped West Coast IPA with Citra, Mosaic, and Strata—a beer that won gold at the formidable LA IPA Fest in 2020.
11. Podcast Episode 217: North Park Beer’s Kelsey McNair Is Making Better West Coast IPA By Tinkering with Hazies
It’s hard enough to win a GABF medal in an IPA category. In 2021, North Park Beer won two—one hazy, one West Coast. Founder Kelsey McNair discusses their dogged approach to improvement and new techniques to maximize the flavor and impact of hops.
12. Podcast Episode 286: West Coast IPA Now! With North Park, Green Cheek, and Russian River
This panel discussion with Kelsey McNair of North Park, Evan Price of Green Cheek, and Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River explores the details of brewing compelling West Coast IPA today.
13. Podcast Episode 300: Direct Fire! West Coast IPA Now, Revisited
In this follow-up to episode 286, the gang—Vinnie Cilurzo, Evan Price, and Kelsey McNair—is back together to answer and discuss your questions spurred by one of the most popular episodes in the history of the Craft Beer & Brewing Podcast.
14. Podcast Episode 342: Hazy IPA Now! With Fidens, North Park, Green Cheek, and Russian River
The West Coast IPA gang is back with a pal from the East Coast—and while IPA is still the focus, this time it’s hazy and soft rather than lean, clear, and bitter. Evan Price of Green Cheek, Steve Parker of Fidens, Kelsey McNair of North Park, and special guest host Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River dive into the creative and technical mechanics of juicy, hazy, New England–style IPA.
15. Podcast Episode 386: Hazy IPA Q&A from the Brewer’s Retreat, with Fidens, Sapwood Cellars, and North Park
In this direct fire Q&A with audience questions, recorded live at the Brewer’s Retreat at Dogfish Head in Delaware, Steve Parker of Fidens, Scott Janish of Sapwood Cellars, and Kelsey McNair of North Park discuss hazy IPA and ways to promote haze stability, balance high finishing gravity, reduce metals in finished beer for longevity, and more.
16. Direct Fire! West Coast IPA Tips from Russian River, North Park, and Green Cheek
In these excerpts from one of our most popular podcast episodes, a few of the best IPA brewers in the business talk about adjusting the mash for dryness, evolving their recipes to keep drinkers (and themselves) happy, defeating the hop creep, maximizing aroma, and more.
17. San Diego’s North Park Is Out Polishing the Cutting Edges of Bright & Bitter IPA
Kelsey McNair turned his West Coast IPA from one of the most-awarded homebrew recipes to a gold medal–winning commercial beer. At the helm of San Diego’s North Park Beer, he’s not done showing off his hoppy tricks.
18. Pick Six: Kelsey McNair’s IPA Time Machine
North Park founder Kelsey McNair has become one of the country’s most influential brewers, thanks to his process-oriented approach to saturating beer with hop flavors. Here, he goes back in time to reach for six IPAs that still inform how he brews them today.