India pale ale advice

i brewed my first batch of home brew with a brewers best India pale kit. i love good beer so i thought i would start with this even though i have done a TON of reading and research. i decided to follow the instructions EXACTLY even though some of the things they do in the instructions seemed to be contrary to what i have been reading. experimenting on my first batch didn't seem to be a good idea. anyway, everything went according to the instructions with the exception of my OG and FG. my OG was a little high (1072) and my FG was also a little high (1019). i checked the FG 3 days in a row and it was stable. i bottled the beer with the priming sugar and put in a cool (66 ave deg) dark closet and began the wait. for a new brewer, the wait was killing me. i had intended to leave it alone for 4 weeks but curiosity got the best of me after 3 weeks. i put a bottle in the fridge after 3 weeks and opened it the next night. the carbonation was fantastic, the color was beautiful but maybe just a little darker than the instructions showed, the head was robust and stayed with the beer most of the time i drank it. i thought the taste was great so im pretty happy. i do have a couple of questions though. the after taste is more bitter than i am accustom to with an India pale ale. i know the IBU rating was suppose to be in the 45 range according to the instructions which should be bitter. is this what REAL India pale ale tastes like and im just accustom to mass produced beer or did i do something wrong. the other question i have is that it has a little chill haze although the beer is really clear otherwise.

thanks for any comments and remember, go easy on the new guyhttps://cdn.homebrewtalk.com/images/smilies/buck.gif

The IPA is definitely a bitter hoppy beer. Its common to be very hoppy. Some of the commercial examples aren't as hoppy, no, and it depends too on which ones, English IPA's are a little less than American IPA's if I recall. Sounds like you did an amazing job, and congrats!

lingering or astringent hop bitterness could be due to water PH levels.

thanks guys. i've already invested in a ph kit for my next batch and im looking at going all grain. this is really fun

The road to perdition:

I remember when 45 IBU's was pretty bitter and I wasn't sure I liked it.

Years later and I'm a dedicated hophead. IBU's are like crack. First, it's an ounce or two in your beer with a kit, then you wake up and you've got pounds of hops in your freezer and you're wondering whether you want a fix of Centennial, Amarillo or Simcoe. Oh screw it, give me all three at the same time!

Try it, you'll like it...

I too just did my first brew, a IPA "hop nogg" Brewers Best, it's not bad, but nothing compared to some of the great IPAs out there. Victory, Dogfish Head, Sweetwater, etc. The one thing i really miss is that big hoppy nose. Love that grapefruity, citrusy nose from Cascade hops. So i plan to dry hop the next one I do, i'd recommend it to you as well. Also, a liquid yeast will make a difference vs the dry yeast. i think the saying is brewers make the wort, yeast makes the beer.

Lots of late hop additions along with dry hopping will get you there.

slc10 said:

i brewed my first batch of home brew with a brewers best India pale kit. i love good beer so i thought i would start with this even though i have done a TON of reading and research. i decided to follow the instructions EXACTLY even though some of the things they do in the instructions seemed to be contrary to what i have been reading. experimenting on my first batch didn't seem to be a good idea.

Click to expand...

My first brew was the same kit, but you are a couple weeks ahead of me. Mine has only been in the bottle for one week now.

slc10 said:

anyway, everything went according to the instructions with the exception of my OG and FG. my OG was a little high (1072) and my FG was also a little high (1019).

Click to expand...

My OG and FG were also off from the instructions. My OG was a little low (1.056) and my FG was similar to yours (1.018). I didn't oxygenate the wort and I didn't do a yeast starter, I just sprinkled the dry yeast and stirred it in. It started off slow, but bubbled steady for a few days. My brew stayed in the primary fermenter for three weeks at a very stable 68°. I haven't tasted it yet, but I don't think I'll be able to wait three weeks like you did.

I dont really know what to think about IBU's. An example is Harpoon Leviathan IIPA, they claim like 120 IBU which is really high, but I didnt find that beer to be overly bitter at all. I think the balance of malt flavor and hop flavor contribute a lot to a great IPA.

slc10 said:

i know the IBU rating was suppose to be in the 45 range according to the instructions which should be bitter. is this what REAL India pale ale tastes like and im just accustom to mass produced beer or did i do something wrong. the other question i have is that it has a little chill haze although the beer is really clear otherwise.

thanks for any comments and remember, go easy on the new guyhttps://cdn.homebrewtalk.com/images/smilies/buck.gif

Click to expand...

It's impossible to know what IBU's are actually in your beer
without laboratory analysis. Given that the AAU's for your hops
are an average for the bale, and that the precise way that you
hopped it, including the intensity of your boil, aren't going to be
the same as the guy who formulated the recipe, you could easily
have a lot more IBU's in the beer.
Most people aren't used to the freshness of homebrew. All
the packaged beer you have been drinking has been drunk at
various ages, and hoppiness decreases RAPIDLY with age, and
I mean just a few weeks.
I'm not even including the effects of drinking out of a glass
instead of a bottle, drinking at a temp warmer than ice cold,
the effect of lower carbonation both initially and after pouring
it into a glass etc etc.

Ray

To get a real answer to your bitterness question, it would probably help to know what kind of IPAs you are used to and like the best.

Your kit was the first one that I made as well. I've made a few since and I found that I really liked the first one but there wasn't much subtlety or complexity to it (which is a vague description but I felt like it tasted simply hoppy) and it was much darker than the others.

I really liked it but the others turned out better for me. I would really recommend the All-Amarillo recipe that you can find on these boards (both in extract and all-grain depending on how you want to do it).