My IPAs have no "hop bite"

All my IPAs seem to lack a real "bite" to them. Sure, they have bitterness (sometimes too much), and they have hop flavor, but not that crisp, clean bite that I get from a good commercial IPA. I have tried adding gypsum, but anything over 4g of it gives my beer a disgusting flavor. I have tried dry hopping, but that doesn't seem to help either. I order fresh ingredients from AHS, Northern Brewer, etc. and use them as soon as they arrive. I have tried all grain and partial mash, to no avail. Any advice?

Also, I'll post my last brew -- it's pretty representative of most of my IPAs (though I usually use S-05 instead):

Steep:
1 lb. light carastan (crystal 15L)

Boil:
65 min - 4 g gypsum
60 min - 5.5 lb. Gold LME
60 min - 2 oz. Magnum (12.3% AA)
30 min - 1 oz. Centennial (9.4% AA)
10 min - 1 oz. Centennial
1 min - 1 oz. Centennial
Flame Out - 5.5 lb. Gold LME
Dry Hop - 2 oz. Centennial

Fermentation:
WLP007 - 10 days @ 68 *F

In my (admittedly limited) experience, it's all about temperature, and probably about water.
My IPA's took a HUGE uptick in quality when I finally got accurate ferm temps with my chest freezer. I normally ferment ales at 65 degrees, which is wort temp, not ambient.

Also, I've not been pleased with the results I got from dry-hopping in the primary. I feel that dry-hopping in a secondary, off the yeast cake, allows much more flavor to be retained.

I've just started experimenting with treating my water, and I'm going slow so I don't wreck a batch, but so far it looks like water treatment is going to have as large an impact as reliable ferm temps.

Have you looked at your water profile as a whole as opposed to just adding gypsum? Your SO4/Cl ratio is pretty important when it comes to perceived bitterness.

Also, 2 oz of 12.3% AA for about a 60 minute boil with a gravity of about 1.040? That's getting over 90 IBUs right there if Brewtarget isn't lying to me, which is ridiculously high for bittering. Try scaling those back some and dumping everything in from 15-0.

Try a different yeast, one that attenuates well.

Try using Chinook for bittering. I personally love the smooth bitterness that Magnum produces, but if you are looking for something more aggressive, Chinook is great for IPAs.

wolfman_48442 said:

In my (admittedly limited) experience, it's all about temperature, and probably about water.
My IPA's took a HUGE uptick in quality when I finally got accurate ferm temps with my chest freezer. I normally ferment ales at 65 degrees, which is wort temp, not ambient.

Also, I've not been pleased with the results I got from dry-hopping in the primary. I feel that dry-hopping in a secondary, off the yeast cake, allows much more flavor to be retained.

I've just started experimenting with treating my water, and I'm going slow so I don't wreck a batch, but so far it looks like water treatment is going to have as large an impact as reliable ferm temps.

Click to expand...

Temp control isn't a problem for me.. I've got a freezer and a digital temp controller. In addition, I open the bucket up and check the temp every day for the first 3 days, then every 2-3 days after that, so I'm getting the wort temp, not the ambient temp. I also pitch a few degrees low and let it rise to my ferment temp..

As for dry hopping, I'm dry hopping in the keg right now, though previously I used to dry hop in a secondary. I'm thinking the secondary was a better way to go, even though everybody seems to think keg hopping is better.. But this might be biased by the fact that all the hops out there right now are 11 months old or older.. Maybe I should reevaluate keg hopping after this year's harvest.

phenry said:

Have you looked at your water profile as a whole as opposed to just adding gypsum? Your SO4/Cl ratio is pretty important when it comes to perceived bitterness.

Also, 2 oz of 12.3% AA for about a 60 minute boil with a gravity of about 1.040? That's getting over 90 IBUs right there if Brewtarget isn't lying to me, which is ridiculously high for bittering. Try scaling those back some and dumping everything in from 15-0.

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There's a late LME addition at flameout.. The OG came out to 1.072. As for water.. I can't get an answer from my city about the water, other than "it's safe to drink". I used 1/2 RO water in this latest batch, still adding the gypsum, and it still tastes "soft".

spiffcow said:

There's a late LME addition at flameout.. The OG came out to 1.072. As for water.. I can't get an answer from my city about the water, other than "it's safe to drink". I used 1/2 RO water in this latest batch, still adding the gypsum, and it still tastes "soft".

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But that LME you add at knockout isn't doing anything to the utilization during the boil.

Try a batch:
no gypsum, use store-bought spring water - just for grins.
Ferment at 62. 3 weeks.
dry hop in a secondary as suggested, - 1 week.

Best case: it's better
Worst case: it's still beer!

phenry said:

But that LME you add at knockout isn't doing anything to the utilization during the boil.

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It's a partial boil of around 3 gallons.. The wort is more concentrated, so the extraction should be close to the same, and would be harmed by adding the whole 11 lb. at once, which would result in wort somewhere around 1.130.

I have done full boils with IPAs before.. The basic problem of lack of hop bite remained.

spiffcow said:

I can't get an answer from my city about the water, other than "it's safe to drink".

Click to expand...

You need to talk to the water engineers, not the customer service people. Or you could take a sample and send it in to Ward Labs for testing.

Hang Glider said:

Try a batch:
no gypsum, use store-bought spring water - just for grins.
Ferment at 62. 3 weeks.
dry hop in a secondary as suggested, - 1 week.

Best case: it's better
Worst case: it's still beer!

Click to expand...

Agreed. The spring water makes a big difference. So does dry hopping off the yeast cake, IMO.

I agree on trying spring water for a test, but dear god, it cost me $1 a gallon!
If it makes a positive difference, then definitely look into treating your own water.

Perhaps I missed it, but what is your OG / FG? Underattenuation can often lead a beer to tasting flabby.

I have been experiencing this issue. Bitterness is not a problem...it is that "bite" that is lacking. Some bitterness up front but not nearly enough.

I have tried a multitude of things, including (but not limited to):
-Fresh whole hops over my normal frozen pellet hops
-Bottled water over my filtered tap water
-Fermenting at temps at different temps (62f/65f/67f)
-Liquid WPL001 over dry US05 (and back again)
-More vigorous boils
-Longer whirlpooling at Flame Out.
-Cutting back on the amt of Crystal in my recipes
-Added .75 tsp gypsum to my (unfiltered) tap water this latest batch (still fermenting).

I really hope this thing is sorted out soon. I did not have this problem as recently as February and it is really taking the fun out of homebrewing for me at the moment.

beeber said:

Try a different yeast, one that attenuates well.

Click to expand...

WLP007 is a mad attenuator. That yeast is quite alright for IPA's.

007 is a great attenuating yeast. One problem with extract brewing is you adopt the water profile of the place the malt extract is made. So adjusting your water is difficult. How fast are you chilling your wort after you late hop addition? The faster you can knock it down to below 170 after, will help maintain hop volitials that might help with this bite you are s after.

ArcaneXor said:

Try using Chinook for bittering. I personally love the smooth bitterness that Magnum produces, but if you are looking for something more aggressive, Chinook is great for IPAs.

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I agree with this. WLP007 can make great IPAs, but magnum is a bit soft.

Bsquared said:

007 is a great attenuating yeast. One problem with extract brewing is you adopt the water profile of the place the malt extract is made. So adjusting your water is difficult. How fast are you chilling your wort after you late hop addition? The faster you can knock it down to below 170 after, will help maintain hop volitials that might help with this bite you are s after.

Click to expand...

Well, it's not as quick as I would like.. About 5 minutes to get below 170, and about 1 hour to get to pitching temps.. I'm thinking about adding cold filtered water at flameout in the future when doing partial boils, but I'm worried about hot-side aeration.

Try WLP001 or WLP090?

Hot side aeration is a myth, don't be concerned about it. Invest a little into an immersion chiller, you will appreciate it when you start AG brewing. If you are really into ipa's look in to a Hopback system too. But you can achieve similar results just by chilling your wort quickly. Also consider hop bursting, or big late additions of hops. I'v been noticing big improvements with my ipas after incorporating a Hopback in to the equation.

+1 on water being the issue.

Chloride to Sulfate ratio can have a dramatic effect on perceived bitterness. I like the suggestion that Hang Glider suggested of using store bought drinking or mineral (not distilled) water for a batch and see if it doesn't change the bitterness issue.

Long story short, this is exactly why I now use RO water to build my own water profile by adding minerals back in. I use a different profile for each batch depending on color (SRM) and style (Bitter or Malty). I use the EZ water spreadsheet by -TH- to manage this.

Ha! I just realized that it has been updated. Now I have to update my recipes.

Bsquared said:

007 is a great attenuating yeast. One problem with extract brewing is you adopt the water profile of the place the malt extract is made. So adjusting your water is difficult. How fast are you chilling your wort after you late hop addition? The faster you can knock it down to below 170 after, will help maintain hop volitials that might help with this bite you are s after.

Click to expand...

It's volatiles, just so you know.

Hang Glider said:

Try a batch:
no gypsum, use store-bought spring water - just for grins.
Ferment at 62. 3 weeks.
dry hop in a secondary as suggested, - 1 week.

Best case: it's better
Worst case: it's still beer!

Click to expand...

Bsquared said:

007 is a great attenuating yeast. One problem with extract brewing is you adopt the water profile of the place the malt extract is made. So adjusting your water is difficult. How fast are you chilling your wort after you late hop addition? The faster you can knock it down to below 170 after, will help maintain hop volitials that might help with this bite you are s after.

Click to expand...

spiffcow said:

Well, it's not as quick as I would like.. About 5 minutes to get below 170, and about 1 hour to get to pitching temps.. I'm thinking about adding cold filtered water at flameout in the future when doing partial boils, but I'm worried about hot-side aeration.

Click to expand...

I think the recipe is "ok" but I'd ditch the pound of carastan (it's crystal malt, and I often don't use ANY in my IPAs, let alone a whole pound) and I'd get rid of the 30 minute hops and use them at 5 minutes. I"d keep the late extract addtion, and lose the gypsum. (Why are you adding it when you don't know your water profile anyway?- but that's for another post!). I'd consider a grain bill of mostly extract, and perhaps .5 pound of crystal if you feel you must.

Chill faster- it's crucial to preserving the hops character. Use an ice bath, and stir the ice bath AND the wort and you can chill within about 20 minutes. Don't add cold water at flame-out- you'll just have more too-warm wort. Chill the wort first to 90 or less, then add the cold water. Using a ice bath in the sink should be FAST, not nearly so slow.

I'd also use spring water nexts time, to see if the problem could be your water. Remember, NO gypsum!

Yooper said:

I think the recipe is "ok" but I'd ditch the pound of carastan (it's crystal malt, and I often don't use ANY in my IPAs, let alone a whole pound) and I'd get rid of the 30 minute hops and use them at 5 minutes. I"d keep the late extract addtion, and lose the gypsum. (Why are you adding it when you don't know your water profile anyway?- but that's for another post!). I'd consider a grain bill of mostly extract, and perhaps .5 pound of crystal if you feel you must.

Chill faster- it's crucial to preserving the hops character. Use an ice bath, and stir the ice bath AND the wort and you can chill within about 20 minutes. Don't add cold water at flame-out- you'll just have more too-warm wort. Chill the wort first to 90 or less, then add the cold water. Using a ice bath in the sink should be FAST, not nearly so slow.

I'd also use spring water nexts time, to see if the problem could be your water. Remember, NO gypsum!

Click to expand...

Funny you say that... This recipe is actually based off your Ruination clone

As for the gypsum... I've been doing this for a while, and have experimented with different levels of gypsum.. It definately needs the gypsum for my water profile. I have tried spring water, but that's just substituting one unknown water profile for another, and the results have not been substantially better than my water + gypsum.

Cooling may be the issue.. I do an ice bath in the sink, but it just doesn't cool fast enough. Maybe my sink is too small, or maybe I just don't have enough ice, but it takes a long time to cool in the sink.

spiffcow said:

Funny you say that... This recipe is actually based off your Ruination clone

As for the gypsum... I've been doing this for a while, and have experimented with different levels of gypsum.. It definately needs the gypsum for my water profile. I have tried spring water, but that's just substituting one unknown water profile for another, and the results have not been substantially better than my water + gypsum.

Cooling may be the issue.. I do an ice bath in the sink, but it just doesn't cool fast enough. Maybe my sink is too small, or maybe I just don't have enough ice, but it takes a long time to cool in the sink.

Click to expand...

I think quicker chilling may really help preserve the hops. What I always did was put ice/water in the sink, and add more cold water as the ice melted, draining off the warm water. Also, stirring both will greatly improve the chilling time. Gently stir to make sure both the icebath and the wort don't have any hotspots. That will speed cooling enormously.

If the gypsum helps, that's fine. I just don't ever recommending anything to water without knowing what it does. If you've got better results with it, that's great.

As far as that recipe, it works for me but it doesn't sound like it's working well for you! BTW, what did you get for a FG? Maybe it's underattenuated a bit? It's not an IPA, technically- it's an IIPA and sometimes extract doesn't attenuate as well as all grain malt bills. If the FG is high, maybe subbing a pound or two of corn sugar for some of the extract might help give more hop bite.

Yooper said:

I think quicker chilling may really help preserve the hops. What I always did was put ice/water in the sink, and add more cold water as the ice melted, draining off the warm water. Also, stirring both will greatly improve the chilling time. Gently stir to make sure both the icebath and the wort don't have any hotspots. That will speed cooling enormously.

If the gypsum helps, that's fine. I just don't ever recommending anything to water without knowing what it does. If you've got better results with it, that's great.

As far as that recipe, it works for me but it doesn't sound like it's working well for you! BTW, what did you get for a FG? Maybe it's underattenuated a bit? It's not an IPA, technically- it's an IIPA and sometimes extract doesn't attenuate as well as all grain malt bills. If the FG is high, maybe subbing a pound or two of corn sugar for some of the extract might help give more hop bite.

Click to expand...

I've been doing that for chilling.. I can get it down to about 110 in a relatively short period of time, but that last 20-30 degrees seem to take forever. It's better in the winter, but with this heat wave my "cold" tap water is 90*, so it melts half the ice before I even get the kettle in the sink.

The FG on it was 1.018, which was a little higher than I'd like.. Next time I'll definately try subbing with some sugar. I've done so before with decent results.

So I'm curious about your recipe.. Would you say you'd do the recipe different now than when you developed it? Such as getting rid of the 30 minute addition and just doing more late additions?

Another thing to help preserve your hop character if you worry about achieving a rapid cool-down is to increase your flame-out charge and spread it out over a 10 minute time frame. Instead of dumping in the entire ounce at flame-out, dump in maybe 0.75 oz at flame out and "continuously" add another 0.75 oz over the next 10 minutes or so. That way, if you are concerned about an extended amount of time at high temperatures volatilizing your hop oils, you can slowly add some as that temperature also slowly comes down.

spiffcow said:

I've been doing that for chilling.. I can get it down to about 110 in a relatively short period of time, but that last 20-30 degrees seem to take forever. It's better in the winter, but with this heat wave my "cold" tap water is 90*, so it melts half the ice before I even get the kettle in the sink.

The FG on it was 1.018, which was a little higher than I'd like.. Next time I'll definately try subbing with some sugar. I've done so before with decent results.

So I'm curious about your recipe.. Would you say you'd do the recipe different now than when you developed it? Such as getting rid of the 30 minute addition and just doing more late additions?

Click to expand...

I like the recipe, but yes I'd change the hopping and ditch the 30 minute additions. I'd like to try it again with that addition at 5 minutes. I mash at a fairly low temperature (it dropped to 149 the last time I did it) and it finished at 1.012.

Irrenarzt said:

It's volatiles, just so you know.

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yes typimh on the iphoneas is touhgdsk

Ahh iPhone will do it every time.

At last - This is the problem I'm dealing with right now.

I feel lika a pay phone guy in a cell phone world. I started brewing in the eighties, when there was very little good beer and anything I made was great.

Now my palate / tastes have changed, there's tons of good beer, and apparently everything I knew is outdated.

I just began brewing again, and the things I'm hearing are:

Shorter boils for DME / LME - that's fine, I have carmelization problems

No secondary required? WTF?

Water chemistry may be part of my "can't get a sharp hops bite" problem?

Oh well, no harm in starting over as a beginner again.

normzone said:

At last - This is the problem I'm dealing with right now.

I feel lika a pay phone guy in a cell phone world. I started brewing in the eighties, when there was very little good beer and anything I made was great.

Now my palate / tastes have changed, there's tons of good beer, and apparently everything I knew is outdated.

I just began brewing again, and the things I'm hearing are:

Shorter boils for DME / LME - that's fine, I have carmelization problems

No secondary required? WTF?

Water chemistry may be part of my "can't get a sharp hops bite" problem?

Oh well, no harm in starting over as a beginner again.

Click to expand...

I feel the same way, usually! I just feel confident in one area, and suddenly find out that there are even more things to learn.

You can make good beer with extract, and you can make great beer with extract and a few other factors. One is fermentation temperature control. When I started brewing, I remember thinking, "Well, 76 degrees isn't much higher than 68- the beer will be fine!". And it was definitely drinkable but nothing like the commercial beers I was into. Once I learned temperature control, I found out about yeast health and pitching rates. And the beers got better and better.

Water chemistry is sort of my "final frontier", but I'm sort of geeky and want to keep going. That's one of the great things about this hobby- anybody can go as deep as they want to into the hobby and still make good beer!

Yooper -

I don't want to thread hijack, so if there's another place to correspond or if you can just link me up I'll be eternally grateful.

I just learned the fermentation temp lesson the hard way, at the same time I learned about overpitching and carmelization. Batch one will be de-bottled and returned to the wild, since I no longer have horses to give it to.

I'm reading the beginners stickies here, and trying to list everything I do / don't want to do in batch five (more on batches two through four some other post) ;-)

Thanks, thanks, and more thanks
normzone

normzone said:

Yooper -

I don't want to thread hijack, so if there's another place to correspond or if you can just link me up I'll be eternally grateful.

I just learned the fermentation temp lesson the hard way, at the same time I learned about overpitching and carmelization. Batch one will be de-bottled and returned to the wild, since I no longer have horses to give it to.

I'm reading the beginners stickies here, and trying to list everything I do / don't want to do in batch five (more on batches two through four some other post) ;-)

Thanks, thanks, and more thanks
normzone

Click to expand...

If you're reading the stickies, that will help. Please feel free to ask any questions at all, and keep reading! That really helps, as well as reading howtobrew.com (a free online book that is really great).

normzone, your in a good place to get back up to speed with homebrewing

normzone said:

At last - This is the problem I'm dealing with right now.

I feel lika a pay phone guy in a cell phone world. I started brewing in the eighties, when there was very little good beer and anything I made was great.

Now my palate / tastes have changed, there's tons of good beer, and apparently everything I knew is outdated.

I just began brewing again, and the things I'm hearing are:

Shorter boils for DME / LME - that's fine, I have carmelization problems

No secondary required? WTF?

Water chemistry may be part of my "can't get a sharp hops bite" problem?

Oh well, no harm in starting over as a beginner again.

Click to expand...

LOL! You sound like me a couple of years ago. I started brewing in the late 70's/early 80's. Somewhere, with kids, work, and life, I had a long spell without brewing. When I started back up, alot had changed.

After spending a bunch of time in these forum areas, I built a bunch of equipment, started doing all grain, analyzed my water and now adjust my water chemistry, grind my own grain, built a hop addition tool for adding hops in the boil, do rapid chilling, single stage temperature controlled ferments, kegging and dry hopping. The result -- the beer has never been better! No comparison to the beers of the 80's.

This is the place to learn!

Rich

What Yooper says about the sink is right on. My last 10 gal AG batch got down to pitching temp in under 30 minutes in the ice-water bath and frequent stirring.

If you don't have a deep sink, you might try getting one of these:



and fitting a drain in it. You could use the one you took out of your mash tun cooler, even. I saw those tubs on sale at Ace hardware the other day for under $10. Also, you can get cheap ice here. It's like $2.50 for any size cooler full.

I also second dumping the 30 minute 1 oz. hop addition and replacing it with a 1 oz. 15 minute addition and a 1 oz. 5 minute addition.

Where are you in Oklahoma? I grew up in Bethany (NW OKC).