Racked to secondary and bitter

I just transferred to my secondary and took a little sample for my gravity and a little sip. The batch is bitter bitter bitter. Is this the general bitterness I am going to get or will my IBU"s go down some. The expected IBU in the kit said I was going to get 15 IBU's but it seems a bit stronger than that. Would there be something that I have done to make it a bit more bitter?

It should mellow with age.

Where is the recipe and your notes? We could give you a better critique if we knew that info.

This is the kit that I used..

3.5 lbs. Plain Amber Malt Extract
2 lbs Plain Amber Dry Malt Extract
8oz. Crushed Cyrstal Malt 60L
4oz Crushed Chocolate
1 oz Crushed Roasted Barley
1 oz Fuggle Hops (Bittering)
1/2 oz. Fuggle Hops (Finishing)
1 each Grain Steeping bag
5 oz Priming Sugar
60 each Crown Caps
1 each Beer Yeast

Starting Gravity1.045- 1.050
Final Gravity 1.010- 1.012
Alchohol by volume 4%-5%
Hop IBU's 15-18

I made a full boil out of the thing. Started off with about 6 gallons and ended up with a hair over 5 gallons... I figured I'd lose some with the transferring from fermenter to fermenter. I'll give a description of step by step what I did.

Put the grains into the cheese cloth and tossed it into a kettle of 6 gallons.
It took about 30 minutes to get it to 170F where I steeped them for 20 minutes as per the paper with the kit.

Removed the grains, and hung them over the pot for about 5 minutes to drain back into the wort. Brought the wort up to a boil then put in my extracts.. The dry went in first then the liquid. When I got it back up to a boil, I put in the hops. boiled for 55 minutes then put in the finishing hops. The finishing hops boiled for about 5 minutes then took the wort off of the fire. I used a wort chiller and got it down to room temp in about 30 minutes. (had to fight with the sink adaptor a few times).

I racked into the primary 6.5 gallon carboy, placed my dual chamber airlock filled with cheap vodka and put it in the dark closet. I started having a little activity about about 4 hours. Like maby a bubble every 10 minutes or so. 48 hours later I thought it was going to blow the airlock off of the fermenter. I know I had to refill the air lock twice. After three days the activity almost came to a hault. I had about one bubble every 15 minutes. This would be about 6 days after I boiled the brew. I racked to the secondary and now it sits with a bubble about every thirty to fourty minutes... Anything else I can add to help with the advice?

I've noticed my beers are a lot less bitter after bottling and carbonation. I guess something about the bubbles cuts down on the perceived bitterness.

Don't worry about how your beer tastes until it is DONE. I recently brewed a California Common that I thought was junk until it mellowed in the bottle for 6 weeks, now it is one of my favorite batches.

You just may be tasting the adjuncts steeped, like the chocolate malt. Give it time to mellow.

Did the kit call for a full boil or a 2 gallon? If you change the size of the boil on a kit you need to adjust the hops. According to the recipator by going from a 2 gallon boil to a 6 gallon boil you took your IBU from 11 to 23. So any way you look at it the beer is going to be more bitter than planned. by adding the 4 gallons of water you should have halved the hops.

The kit said that it was for a 3 gallon or 5 gallon boil. I have a huge pot so I just went for the full 5 gallons... It's not that I don't like bitter. I kinda like my beer on that side. My main concern was that it was a bit bitter than expected. I want to make sure I can control my batches better. On the positive side, my sig other doesn't like bitter beer so its more for me.. hahaha

What's a good program to use for putting together some custome mixes?

You should know that the gravity of the boil affects hop utilization rates.. I don't think its a linear relationship either. I remember seeing a chart somewhere on here or the internet..you can google it if you're really interested. I think it might have been in Palmer's www.howtobrew.com

Point is, if the sugar content of the wort is super high as it would be in a concentrated boil the the hops are not utilized as well as they would be in a full boil where the specific gravity would be lower. By watering your beer down before the boil you effectively increased your hop utilization and ended up with a more bitter beer. 23 isn't too bitter though, I find that for some styles the 15-25 mark is about right and typically don't like to ever wander into the 40+ range.. I'm a fan of maltier, sweeter brews. Give it time, the bitterness will mellow out after a month or two in the bottles and your tastes will likely change a bit as well.

Hey, at least it didn't turn out 60 or 70+ IBUs like some of the recipes I see around... crazy hopheads I tell ya!

Ok that makes some sense then... Let me see if I have this right. By going from a 3 gallon to a 5 gallon, what I do is dilute the amout of sugar that would be concentrated in the water and in a sence, allowed more of the hop material to dissolve into solution so the bitterness would be more prominant... Is this correct? I've kinda been trying to figure out this whole % value of hop utilization.. I guess I'm kinda on the correct path... To avoid this in the future, would I lower the hops when I increase the amount of water?

gauthierk said:

Ok that makes some sense then... Let me see if I have this right. By going from a 3 gallon to a 5 gallon, what I do is dilute the amout of sugar that would be concentrated in the water and in a sence, allowed more of the hop material to dissolve into solution so the bitterness would be more prominant... Is this correct? I've kinda been trying to figure out this whole % value of hop utilization.. I guess I'm kinda on the correct path... To avoid this in the future, would I lower the hops when I increase the amount of water?

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you pretty much have it. I've never actually thought about the chemistry and physics going on under the hood, but in principle, the thicker the liquid, the less bitterness you get out of your hops. If you boil more liquid, use less hops.

However, I believe this "use less hops" should only apply to BITTERING hops. Flavor and aroma hops should not need to be adjuested for gravity.

-walker

I'm fixing to start on a new batch of beer and will do some work with calculations.. I'm trying a batch of English Brown Ale (extract/steeping) and will see about the IBU's of this one... The yeast I'm using is the White Labs English ale yeast... The instructions in this kit only all for a 2 gallon boil then add 3 to the fermenter... Makes me feel funny boiling two gallons in a 6.5 gallon stock pot. The expected yield of alcohol is 4.0 to 5.0. How can I get that up a little like to about 7?

gauthierk said:

I'm trying a batch of English Brown Ale... The expected yield of alcohol is 4.0 to 5.0. How can I get that up a little like to about 7?

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Brew a different style of beer.

gauthierk said:

The instructions in this kit only all for a 2 gallon boil then add 3 to the fermenter... Makes me feel funny boiling two gallons in a 6.5 gallon stock pot. The expected yield of alcohol is 4.0 to 5.0. How can I get that up a little like to about 7?

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You realize thaty ou can boil as much as possible for your kettle. You will have to probably do more cooling but the larger the boil the better in my book.

I realize tha I can boil as much as I want in my kettle. My last brew I started boiling 6 gallons to expect about a gallon of evap during the boil. The instructions told me to only boil three and it seems to be a little bit on the bitter side of what it said it would be. On a kit that tells me to brew 2 gallons then add three, if I boil the full 5 gallons am I going to mess up my mix?

I downloaded a couple of programs for calculating my ibu's and so fourth but none of them seem to have the malt's and hops that come in my kits.

Any ideas as to how else I can figure out what my %'s will be if I do not have the info about my grains and hops?

BTW. Off subject. I have some solid stuff that is kind of a baige color floating around in my secondary. It's probably about the size of a toothpick end that's just hanging around floating at the top. I'm still having a little bit of fermentation going on, (on bubble per hour aprox). Is this a normal thing to see?

What type of hops and how much do you have for the Brown Ale? Just post the recipe.If I cannot help you there certainly is someone else here that can. The stuff floating in your secondary sounds like yeast that is floating on some CO2.

The ingredients are
3.3 lbs Plain Amber malt extract
2 lbs Plain amber dry malt extract
8 oz Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
1 each Grain Steeping bag
1 oz Willamette Hops (bittering)
1/2 oz Willamette Hops (Finishing)
5 oz priming sugar


Brew times are bring the grains up to 160-170F and hold for 20 min. Toss the grains and bring to a boil. Toss in bittering hops. 55 minutes later toss in finishing. Five minutes later stop the boil chill the wort and GTG. It's telling me to boil only 2 gallons then add 3 into the fermenter. If I did a full boil, it would make it more bitter correct? I'm using White Labs English Ale liquid yeast.

Here's what I get, taking your recipe, adding a pound of light DME, making it a full boil (I used 6 gallons as a boil size and 5.25 gallons as a final batch size), and keeping the hop schedule the same:


Beer: - Style: English Brown
Type: Extract w/grain Size: 5.25 gallons
Color:
25 HCU (~14 SRM)
Bitterness: 21 IBU
OG: 1.050 FG: 1.013
Alcohol: 4.8% v/v (3.8% w/w)
Grain: 8 oz. British crystal 50-60L
Boil: minutes SG 1.044 6 gallons
3.3 lb. Amber malt extract
1 lb. Light dry malt extract
2 lb. Amber dry malt extract
Hops: 1 oz. Willamette (5% AA, 60 min.) (pellets)
.5 oz. Willamette (5% AA, 5 min.) (pellets)

The OG of 50 is the high end of the British Brown style. The 21 IBUs is in the middle, which guessing from your comments, that's what you're looking for (a distinctly not bitter version of the style.)

The calculated color is a touch light for the style, but my experience tells me that a beer made with mostly amber malt extract is going to be a little darker than what these calculations indicate.

Taking the advice I made my second batch today adding an extra pount of DME. The color is lighter than the first batch that I made and the aroma is a little bit sweeter than the first. We shall see what the results are. I'm probably going to try and mix and match some steeping grains for my next batch of beer that will be brewed up in a few weeks when I bottle up my secondary fermenter. I was going to bottle up the secondary today but I still have bubbles every ten minutes or so. I want to make sure it's ready so I have no bottle bombs... hehehe Becides, I'm in no hurry considereing I have finally found a local micro that has some sweet stuff to hold me over...

budbo said:

http://www3.telus.net/sockmonkeysandbeer/beer/BrewEaze/BrewEaze.html

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Great Link!
I am getting started with it right now.
Thanks,
Apparatus