100 + I.B.U calculation

I brewed an American ipa yesterday, and my ibu calculation came out to ~109. I know ibu's can be much greater, but was wondering if it was going to over power the citrusy flavor I was going for. The recipe was as follows:

4 # pale LME
3.3 # extra light LME
.5 # briess caramel 20
.5 # Simpson caramalt 30
.5 # Simpsons golden promise
.5 # Gambrinus honey malt
1 oz centennial -60 min
1oz chinook-60 min
1oz cascade-40 min
1oz centennial-30 min
.5 oz simcoe-10 min
.5 oz simcoe- 0 min
American ale 1056

I also used the zest of 2 limes,2 lemons,1 honey tangerine, and a tangelo. It was added with 15 min left in the boil.

Calculations were from an online brewing calculator
o.g:1.055
Fg:1.012
Abv:5.46%
Ibu:109
Batch size:5 gallons

Any feedback would be much appreciated

Since the only late addition hops you have are these:

5 oz simcoe-10 min
.5 oz simcoe- 0 min

you won't have any hops flavor to interfere with the citrus. But that's a boatload of bittering hops (any hops added before 20 minutes before the end of the boil contribute to bitterness with very little flavor added) so you should have a very very bitter beer. I don't know if the citrus can possibly overcome all of those bittering additions.

Citrusy hops at 15, 10, 5, and 0 minutes might have helped instead of all bittering hops.

Seriously over-bittered. Not much you can do at this point. This is going to be like biting a Seville orange.

thats what I was afraid of...think it will be drinkable?

dcon8 said:

thats what I was afraid of...think it will be drinkable?

Click to expand...

It will be very bitter. If you add some dryhops, it might be more easily drinkable. You could try it.

Next time, for an IPA, change up the hopping like this:
1 oz centennial -60 min
.5oz chinook-15 min
1oz cascade- 10 min
1 oz centennial- 5 min
.5 oz simcoe- 0 min
.5 oz simcoe- dryhop
.5 oz chinook- dryhop

Same amount of hops! But much more flavor and aroma, with a citrusy flavor and far less bitterness.

I added an oz of willamette pellets to the secondary before racking this afternoon. Hopefully this will cut the bitterness a little, because it definitely stays with you. I taste the citrus initially,but its soon wiped out. I'll let it sit 2 weeks before bottling...guess time will tell

I would switch to warrior hop for 60min get rid of the 1oz centennial-30 min and dry hop 20z cascade leaf.