cascade vs. argentine cascade confusion

I'm fairly new to brewing and made the mistake of using regular cascade (5.4 AA%) instead of what the recipe called for, argentine cascade (~3.5 AA%). I didn't realize it was an entirely different hop, I just thought it was a fancy imported version, and any variety would do ...

it was solely a bittering addition, 2oz at 60 mins. I'm making a saison. did I screw up this beer? for the record, I'm using the wyeast 3711. in fact, here's the recipe: http://www.brewingtv.com/recipe/2010/7/15/le-saison-noire.html. I'm sure whatever comes out will taste like beer, just wondering what it is I might have brewed.

Bittering hops tend to not matter as much when it comes to the aroma/taste of the hop, but you did nearly double your IBU's. If you let it age a bit the bitterness will drop out over time. I did a similar wrong substitution brewing an amber when I was starting out brewing, and when bottling it was horribly bitter, but about 8 weeks later it was a very good beer.

It'll be much more bitter if you still used 2 oz of the higher AA hop.

is 5.4AA% x 2oz all that bitter to begin with?

bbatch said:

is 5.4AA% x 2oz all that bitter to begin with?

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About 40-45 IBUs (Rager), depending on the malt bill. Not that far above the upper limit for a Saison as defined by the BJCP.

That's not a ton of AA's, but even though it's a dark beer (mainly from .5lb of Carafa III) there aren't a lot of roasted malts to balance it out, especially with pilsen being the base malt.

is there anything I can do at this stage to help balance it out?