Honey Amber ale too sweet!

This was a rookie mistake!!

OG 1.070, FG 1.010, IBU ~ 20 - This was a 10 Gallon batch and I used WAY too much honey (6 LBS - I normally use 4 LBS)! High gravity, but way too sweet!

My question is this, at this point is there ANYTHING I can do to bring more bitter in? This batch has already been kegged and carbonated. Perhaps an inline hop filter or hop bittering drops?

Don't want to waste 10 gallons, but too sweet in the current state.

wow, what were you shooting for? 1010 is pretty low but the honey really adds the sweetness. I would say a healthy does of dry hopping will help but you can't add bitterness at this point unless you have the extract stuff.

You could boil hops in plain water (half gallon maybe?) and add that to the beer in the keg. 1 ounce of 8%AA hops boiled for 60 minutes should be around 30IBU and get you up around 48 total. Here's my math in case anyone finds fault

Your beer = 5 gallons at 20IBU
Hop Tea = 0.5 gallons at 332 IBU based on Rager formula, 8%AA, 1 oz., 60 min boil, 0.00 gravity water

5gal/5.5gal * 20IBU = 18IBU
0.5gal/5.5gal * 332IBU = 30IBU

I made the assumption that IBU was additive here, so 48IBU total.


Of course, this would drop your gravity a bit, but you may be OK with that. If not, maybe boil off more of the water?

EDIT: I just noticed that it was a 10gal batch, so double the hops to 2oz.

You could boil hops in plain water (half gallon maybe?) and add that to the beer in the keg. 1 ounce of 8%AA hops boiled for 60 minutes should be around 30IBU and get you up around 48 total.

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Great idea - I think I will give this a shot!

wow, what were you shooting for?

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We had extra honey and my brewing partner thought we should try our recipe with more honey.

We learned a very valuable lesson here, small changes to a known good recipe!!

It's hard to get IBU's from boiling hops in plain water so I would advise against that. You could add some Malt Extract and some hops and add it to your boil. If I made a beer too sweet I would make an overly bitter beer then blend them.

I stopped at LHBS last night and picked up 2 oz of Centennial 9 IBU. One of the employees inquired on my project. After explaining my dilemma, he walked me over to where the additives were and handed me a syringe of "hop shot". He instructed me to use 2.4 ml in 5 gallons of boiling wort for 1 hour to get the results I wanted. A bit skeptical about this, I purchased the product along with the hops.

It's hard to get IBU's from boiling hops in plain water so I would advise against that.

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Once home, we bled one of the 5 gallon corny kegs of co2 and removed 1/2 gallon of the sweet beer. We then slowly brought this (along with 3 quarts of fresh water for evaporation) to a boil and put the 2.4 ml as suggested in the wort for 1 hour. When this was complete, we cooled down the wort and strained. We then put it back in the keg we drew this from and SLOWLY mixed this back and forth and re-charged with CO2 enough for a taste.

It was a cloudy beer but our desired results were achieved!

The beer is now balanced enough to make it palatable to drink, thanks for all the suggestions this was a lesson I won't soon forget!

Just about a week ago I had the same issue... didn't pay close enough attention and created a barley wine waaaaaaay underhopped. Fortunately for me this was one of my 1gal experimental batches... I went ahead and grabbed about .6oz of hops and boiled in 1qt water down to 3/4C and added into my beer, stirred and came back the next day... worked out perfectly! Its a very salvagable brew that is now aging. I'm sure the efficency was not as good as it would have been boiling in wort, but for this purpose and being such a small batch, it worked.