IPA ruin?

Last weekend brewed an IPA used a brewers best kit. Before boiling was complete I found out that the hops were placed out of order-- flavor, bitterness, then aroma. Boiling times for each hop addition were accurate. The beer is approaching 14 days is the beer ruined?

Ruined? No. Will it be an IPA? Maybe not. It depends in the AA percentage for the hops you used. It will definitely be beer, just maybe a pale ale.

Thank you I don't have the AAU but the order was 1 oz Columbus flavoring (30min), 1 oz cascade bittering (30 min) finished off with 2oz cascade Aroma--
Do you think it's drinkable ?

You'll probably love it

breweringbeaz said:

Do you think it's drinkable ?

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Of course it's gonna be drinkable. Don't sweat it dude

If I'm reading your post correctly it sounds like you moved you Columbus addition to the beginning of the boil and switched it with the Cascade.

Your beer is by no means ruined. It might be slightly more bitter than intended, but it's an IPA so that's not exactly terrible.

If you drink it and find the bitterness to be overwhelming, you could always let the beer age for a while and the hops will start to fade a bit.

Edit: I don't think I read your post correctly.

Yes, it will probably be the best beer you've brewed so far. The only way to ruin a beer is to accidentally spill the entire batch on the ground (and even then I'm sure some here would argue it's still salvageable).

that sounds like a tasty brew right there. i love columbus for bittering cascade is a delightful tasting hop too.

homebrewhaha said:

If I'm reading your post correctly it sounds like you moved you Columbus addition to the beginning of the boil and switched it with the Cascade.

Your beer is by no means ruined. It might be slightly more bitter than intended, but it's an IPA so that's not exactly terrible.

If you drink it and find the bitterness to be overwhelming, you could always let the beer age for a while and the hops will start to fade a bit.

Edit: I don't think I read your post correctly.

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Yes you are correct hops went out of order

Did you do a half boil then top off with water? If so, you're probably better off. The extra bitterness from the higher AA columbus hops will help. It's hard to make an IPA bitter enough when you're not doing a full boil.

peterj said:

Did you do a half boil then top off with water? If so, you're probably better off. The extra bitterness from the higher AA columbus hops will help. It's hard to make an IPA bitter enough when you're not doing a full boil.

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I did a boil with 2.5 gallons and add to fermenting bucket and topped off with cold water to reach 5 gallons.

Thanks for all of the helpful feedback. Fingers crossed it will turn out well. Any suggestions for the next beer choice?

If I was doing an IPA , I would have done the hops that way any way. I love cascade flavor ad aroma.

There titles of bittering, aroma are just to denote the order. It's not like it is a bitter version of cascade, or whatever. It'll be good.

peterj said:

Did you do a half boil then top off with water? If so, you're probably better off. The extra bitterness from the higher AA columbus hops will help. It's hard to make an IPA bitter enough when you're not doing a full boil.

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unionrdr said:

Being a BB kit,it was designed for a partial boil that the average home brewer has the equipment for.

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When you dilute the wort with 50% water you also reduce the IBU's by 50%. This is fine in lower bitterness beers because you can compensate by bittering it twice as much as you would. The problem is that there is a limit to the number of IBU's you can put into a wort. I believe the limit is around 100 which is also close to the amount of IBU's you can perceive when drinking a beer. So you can have a maximum of about 100 IBU's in your 2.5 gallons of wort, and then when you dilute it by 50% you end up with a maximum of 50 IBU's in any beer you make. So the larger your boil and the less top off water you have to use, the more IBU's you can potentially have in your finished beer.

This post discusses it in length: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/there-limit-ibus-you-can-get-wort-273482/index4.html

I think it is going to be horrible. You will need to send it to me so that I can dispose of it properly, filtering all that hoppy badness through my liver.

It's going to be just fine.

Yeah, actually hercher is probably right. Go ahead and ferment for a few weeks though, and you might as well bottle it after that (you know, for practice). Then you should probably just send it on to us as soon as you can.

peterj said:

When you dilute the wort with 50% water you also reduce the IBU's by 50%. This is fine in lower bitterness beers because you can compensate by bittering it twice as much as you would. The problem is that there is a limit to the number of IBU's you can put into a wort. I believe the limit is around 100 which is also close to the amount of IBU's you can perceive when drinking a beer. So you can have a maximum of about 100 IBU's in your 2.5 gallons of wort, and then when you dilute it by 50% you end up with a maximum of 50 IBU's in any beer you make. So the larger your boil and the less top off water you have to use, the more IBU's you can potentially have in your finished beer.

This post discusses it in length: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/there-limit-ibus-you-can-get-wort-273482/index4.html

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Basically true,but the kits are designed for partial boils,since the average brewer only has small to maybe medium stock pots to boil in. so these hop amounts/schedules are designed for that type of brewing in mind. That way,hop/ to malt flavors/aromas come out as intended after topping up with the right amount of water for the total batch volume.

So any recommendations or just wait and see

It'll be just fine. I probably would have swapped the CTZ to a bittering hop anyways unless I was specifically going for that resin/dank profile. At worst, you'll end up with an APA which should still be very tasty.