stpug

Recipes 

I think your only miscalculation was the ounce of Columbus for bittering (60 minutes). Everything else was short boil time, or no boil time, and should not have overbittered your brew. The recipe seems fine to me with that one exception. A guess of the correct amount of columbus for 60 minutes is probably 8-15 grams (1/4 to 1/2 of what you used, at 60 minutes).

Caveman3141

Recipes 

Ah I didn't notice your fermentables. Since you had a relatively low gravity during boil, combined with a fairly large volume you were going to have a high utilization of the bittering compounds for your beer. My calculator came out a little over 60 IBUs.

Thegreatestgray

Recipes 

I used to much hops on my first brew around 2 oz at 60 it does mellow out after awhile but if you keep drinking like I did you get use to the bitterness so your options are to either age it longer or just drink it enough to the point you don't mind it anymore

kh54s10

Recipes 

Another thing to note is that the taste may change quite a bit as the conditioning progresses. I have never opened a bottle before 2 weeks, but at the 2 weeks some are carbonated and others are not but ALL taste better after 3 weeks. I also had one that tasted pretty bad at bottling and very good after 3 weeks conditioning.

ACbrewer

Recipes 

Another option to cut the bitterness besides aging, is to brew a no hop beer and then mix them. In fact if you have 2 containters, you could gently stir up what you have (to get yeast off teh bottom) rack half of it over and put 1/2 of the new brew on top of each - be sure to cool it first - and then you will have 2 batches at 23L instead of 1.

for the Americans reading, about 28gr is 1 oz, so total hops are about 3.5 oz of each (7) although bittering is at 1oz (30gr). and the 2x 1.5Kg is 3kg = 6.6 LME (2 cans) the 400gr of honey is about .88lb

It is also worth mentioning that depending on how quickly he cooled, he'd get some bittering acid to disolve in teh 15 and even 5 min adds, I think the change over temp is alike 160F/71C but I don't recall exactly, and some of that bitterness will come out if it takes an hour for the cooling to take place (I'm guessing at the hour, maybe he has a 5 min wort chiller, not a 1 hour ice bath, or maybe OP removed hop socks at flame out). Anyhow, depending on you exact methodology, you can still get AA isomerization even as you cool if you don't pull the hops or cool rapidly.

cheeseburger

Recipes 

Cheers for all the help guys! I'm new to this homebrew game and addicted just 2 brews in! As for the bitterness levels, I don't think it's my particular taste as i like beers like Brewdog Hardcore IPA, Sierra Nevada Torpedo, Thornbridge Jaipur ect... As for cooling the wort it probably took 30 mins in an ice bath continually stirring to release the heat then topped with cold water. The hops were left in the wort during this period as i did not put them in a muslin, squeeze them afterward cooling. Anywho, i know i'll get lots of tuts from you experienced guys but im going to taste another bottle tonight....purely for 'scientific research' purposes.

cheeseburger

Recipes 

PANIC OVER!!! I'm drinking a bottle now and it tastes stunning - even after only 10 days in the bottle! Seems I have done what so many do and panic over drinking green beer- The harsh bitterness has gone and the hops are tasting lovely - It still young so hopefully the flavours will round off and get even better.........Guess I need to stop drinking them in order to find out!

Thegreatestgray

Recipes 

Yeah waiting is always the hardest part about home brewing

moffatt163

Recipes 

Columbus hops have an alpha acid rating of 11 - 16% and cascade hops have a rating of 4.5 - 7%. The higher rating will give more bitterness to your beer. The two factors to adjust are amount and boil time. 60min boil is standard so reduce the amount of high alpha acid hops and maybe add to the low acid ones to get the flavor profile you want.

Caveman3141

Recipes 

This is true, of course, but it's always important to remember that when adjusting for bitterness that the boil gravity also has a dramatic effect on AA utilization

http://realbeer.com/hops/research.html