New beer style: India FAIL Ale (IFA)

There's no real question here, just a story about what happens when you absent mindedly start throwing hops into the boil with no regard to AAU or qty.

A few months ago, I had been playing around with hop quantities and boil times, and wound up with the bitterest IPA I have ever tasted. At the time that I brewed this, I didn't really understand alpha acids, or how IBU's were calculated. I was strictly going off the advice that I was given that "Most brewers don't consider a beer to be an IPA until it has a least 7 oz of hops in it." The SG was 1.060 in a 5 gal batch.

I think this was about the hop sched. This is apparently what I wrote down during the boil.

2 oz Northern Brewer - 80 minutes
1 oz Northern Brewer - 60 minutes
2 oz cascade - 30 minutes
1 oz Amarillo - 0 min
1 oz centennial - 0 minutes
1 oz amarillo - dry hopped

So, the IBU's came out to 125! and to top it off, I under pitched it, so the FG was 1.020. I tried it for the first time last night with a buddy. His comment was "All I taste is bitter." and he was right. There was so much hoppiness to it that I could have brewed this with the cheapest malt ingredients and you'd never have known. Don't get me wrong, I love a bitter IPA, but this...is rediculous.

Knowing what I now know, I would have done things differently, have since. Oh well.

I have heard that hop bitterness will level out with age... even a SG 1.060 that is 125 IBU?

Let it sit for 6 mos. It may become one killer IPA!

JOHN51277 said:

Let it sit for 6 mos. It may become one killer IPA!

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Totally. Do it.

Good advice. I was almost thinking "why even let it sit around any longer...just drink it up and free up the space" Perhaps I will hold off on it 'till summer.

Well, it's a learning curve alright, you have a ton of early hop additions which was always going to make that beer a very bitter one, also you boiled for what looks like 80 minutes which would utilize the bitterness of the hops to their full.

You should really put your recipes through some software to give you an idea of IBU's and other attributes of your beer. I use hopville.com. It's free and a very useful tool when throwing a recipe together.

I think you should hold off on those bottles for a while, you've nothing left to loose I guess, I would normally say drink the big hoppy years as fresh as you can as hop profile will be lost over time, but I think given the bitterness of the beer time would do it some good

i agree with the "give it some time" approach...

that said, i brewed a 161 ibu beer recently (imperial amber) that pretty much tastes like hop juice and i've gotten positive feedback on it from others.

Man, I would have dry hopped with another 2oz of hops to put the finishing touch on it.

Nothing wrong with an ESB. But you could have skipped the 80 minute adds.

Bitterness takes a LONG time to fade I am afraid...

Hop flavor and aroma on the other hand, you could get rid of quickly.

That being said, if you've got the container space, always give it a try.

I've been into blending beers in the glass lately. Mixed my Alder Wood Smoked Porter with a buddy's Irish Red to come up with a Smokin' Redhead for example. Try mixing your IPA with a pale ale, you might find the perfect proportions to make a killer tasting beer. Either that or wait...a long time.

Then again, you could brew up a nice malty amber, and blend it with the UberIPA until you reach a bitterness level you like.

Well, now that it has been sitting around for a couple months, it has actually mellowed out nicely. I wish it had finished out a little drier, but thats an anrelated issue.

Since I am doing partial boils, would low hop utilization cause the bitter to subside faster after bottling?

dkershner said:

Hop flavor and aroma on the other hand, you could get rid of quickly.

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And you could get rid of horny playmates in a hurry too, but WHY!?!?!? :cross:

forces said:

So, the IBU's came out to 125! and to top it off, I under pitched it, so the FG was 1.020.

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That would actually help balance the beer, not make it more bitter. 1.060 is not a massive beer, I would think more might be at work here than underpitching as to why you finished high. Since this is an extract thread, I'll assume it was not mash temp related. What yeast did you use and what temperature did you ferment at?

joety said:

That would actually help balance the beer, not make it more bitter. 1.060 is not a massive beer, I would think more might be at work here than underpitching as to why you finished high. Since this is an extract thread, I'll assume it was not mash temp related. What yeast did you use and what temperature did you ferment at?

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I used US05. I don't recall the dermentation temp, but I remember this was fermenting during some of the colder months of winter. It would have never been below 55 degrees F though. Since it has been a few months, this beer seems to have mellowed out a lot. Because of the high FG, It is now a little too MALTY. I beleive that you are correct though, there was another contributing factor; I wasn't patient enough with the primary fermentation. With it fermenting at a lower temp, I should have left it in the primary for another week or so to compensate. I didn't know that at the time.

forces said:

I used US05. I don't recall the dermentation temp, but I remember this was fermenting during some of the colder months of winter. It would have never been below 55 degrees F though. Since it has been a few months, this beer seems to have mellowed out a lot. Because of the high FG, It is now a little too MALTY. I beleive that you are correct though, there was another contributing factor; I wasn't patient enough with the primary fermentation. With it fermenting at a lower temp, I should have left it in the primary for another week or so to compensate. I didn't know that at the time.

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Yes, it's a lot harder to underpitch with dry yeast. Zymurgy or BYO did a recent experiment going from something like 1/4 pack up to 4 packs in the same wort, and there was no difference in FG in the four/five batches. This was done concurrently with multiple brewers with the same result. Taste was impacted as well as total time of the fermentation, but not final gravity. They did not try it with liquid yeast. I think they felt the experiment would be too hard to control.

Let it sit, the high FG may actually help balance the hops I bet.