Arrogant Bastard Clone tastes sweet - Can anyone help figure out why

Didn't know which forum to place this, so thought I would put it here.

Brewed an Arrogant Bastard Clone 10/16. Not sure how the recipe came about, and looking back on it, it seems a little busy. Ingredients are for 6.5 gallons:

Partial Mash Grains @ 150, got 80% efficiency
1.5 lbs 2-row
1.0 lbs Crystal (40L)
0.65 lbs Aromatic
0.65 lbs Biscuit
0.65 lbs Melanoiden
0.65 lbs Special B
0.25 lbs Rolled Oats
0.03 lbs Black (0.5 ozs)

1.0 lbs Cane Sugar
6.0 lbs Light LME
0.35 lbs Wheat LME

1.3 ozs Chinook (11.5%) @ 60
0.8 oz Magnum (10%) @ 60
0.7 oz Chinook (11.5%) @ 45
0.5 ozs Chinook (11.5%) @ 30
0.5 ozs Chinook (11.5%) @ 10
1.3 ozs Chinook (11.5%) @ 0

Yeast PacMan

OG: 1.066
FG: 1.012

My FG was higher than I had expected based on my experience with this yeast. I was expecting 1.010, but no big deal.

Bottled 11/11. Tasted it a couple of days ago and it had not fully carb'd. Tasted sweet. Thought the problem was residual priming sugar and if I left it for a while it would go away.

From this batch I took 2.5 gallons at bottling time and put it in a couple of 5 liter carboys and added oak. Tasted them yesterday to see how they were going. They too tasted sweet, but they had not had the priming sugar.

I've never used Melanoiden malt before. Could this be the problem. I assumed it was similarly fermentable to Munich malt. Does it have a lot of unfermentable sugar?

I've got the Crystal and Special B in there too, so maybe this put it over the top and I should have removed an equivalent amount of the Crystal when add the Melanoiden Malt.

Lots of flavor. It is not going to go to waste.

Seems a bit light in IBU's for an Arrogant Bastard clone. You don't say if you used leaf of pellet hops. If they're leaf, then you're definitely a little low in bitterness. Pellet, not as much, but I'd still say a bit low.

The other explanation could be that it's a bit green. A lot of my beers taste sweeter before they have time to condition.

84 IBUs is a bit light?

Calder said:

84 IBUs is a bit light?

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For an Arrogant Bastard? Yeah.

Calder said:

84 IBUs is a bit light?

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I punched it into Beer Calculus and it came out in the 60's for leaf hops and 70's for pellet.

I don’t remember the exact number but isn’t Arrogant Bastard a 100+ IBU beer? Also, underneath all that hoppiness AB has a distinct sweet malty taste, it just isn’t overpowering because of the hop contrast. Reduce that hoppiness a bit too much and I could easily see it coming across too sweet.

Oh, and I am just going off of what I know about Arrogant Bastard (my favorite commercial beer). I am not proficient at interpreting recipes yet.

I'm not a fan of that PM recipe. You've got lots of "sweet" grains, like:
1.0 lbs Crystal (40L)
0.65 lbs Aromatic
0.65 lbs Biscuit
0.65 lbs Melanoiden
0.65 lbs Special B
oats? Weird.

and not much in the way of base malt. You've only got 6.35 pounds of LME! Way too much specialty malts for the amount of base grains you have. The recipe is at fault here.

Brewer_Bob said:

I don’t remember the exact number but isn’t Arrogant Bastard a 100+ IBU beer? Also, underneath all that hoppiness AB has a distinct sweet malty taste, it just isn’t overpowering because of the hop contrast. Reduce that hoppiness a bit too much and I could easily see it coming across too sweet.

Oh, and I am just going off of what I know about Arrogant Bastard (my favorite commercial beer). I am not proficient at interpreting recipes yet.

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I don't think Stone has ever released the IBU's/Hop varieties for AB. Their 100+ beer you might be thinking of is Ruination. I think AB is closer to 80-85.

I like the recipe. I think cutting the special B to an ounce or two would help with the sweetness. The aromatic/biscuit/melanoiden over lap in flavors a bit, but I don't think they are creating a problem.

I love oats and use them in just about every ale darker than a pale I make, but that's just my weird obsession.

Yooper said:

I'm not a fan of that PM recipe. You've got lots of "sweet" grains, like:
1.0 lbs Crystal (40L)
0.65 lbs Aromatic
0.65 lbs Biscuit
0.65 lbs Melanoiden
0.65 lbs Special B
oats? Weird.

and not much in the way of base malt. You've only got 6.35 pounds of LME! Way too much specialty malts for the amount of base grains you have. The recipe is at fault here.

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+ 100

-a.

ChshreCat said:

I punched it into Beer Calculus and it came out in the 60's for leaf hops and 70's for pellet.

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Now punch in a late extract addition for the LME. That will bump it up.

Calder said:

Now punch in a late extract addition for the LME. That will bump it up.

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Ahh, that'll do it.

Give it a month to condition and see what you think then.

What do you change on Beer Calculus to adjust for a late extract addition?

logan3825 said:

What do you change on Beer Calculus to adjust for a late extract addition?

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There isn't an adjustment for that, as far as I know. There is in Beersmith though.

That's what I thought. Thank you.

Just wanted to report back. I thought it tasted a little too sweet originally when tasted on it's own (maybe malty).

Right now I have a glass of mine and a glass of AB side-by-side.

Color - identical
Taste - identical (maybe my taste buds are shot, but I am sober). It seems it is not any sweeter than the original.
Aroma - there is just a little more fresh/fruity aroma to the AB than mine, but not much. Trying to figure out if it's more hops, or that AB uses an English yeast and I used PacMan.

Maybe I could ditch the Biscuit and Aromatic if I used Marris Otter.

Going to try the same thing again, double the 10 minute hops, change to an English yeast and cut the Crystal by a third.

I can't believe it is so close. I put a label on the glass that had mine in it. If I had not done that, I would probably not be able to tell which was which.

Not bad, $24 for 6.5 gallons of AB Clone.

Calder said:

Aroma - there is just a little more fresh/fruity aroma to the AB than mine, but not much. Trying to figure out if it's more hops, or that AB uses an English yeast and I used PacMan.

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Wonder if adjusting the special B might help that.