Hop to Gravity ratio is WAY off!

OK, i'm an idiot. just to get that out of the way. So i brewed a HUGE beer. i mean BIG. its a russian imperial. i just used what was laying around.
6.6 # LME light
3 # dark DME
3 # light DME
1 # brown sugar
1# molasses
8 oz lactose
12 oz roasted barley
12 oz chocolate malt
12 oz crystal 10L
8 oz cocoa powder Hersheys
3 oz sterlings
.5 oz saaz
2 packets of nottinghams dry

8.1 IBU
OG 1.118!!!!!
est FG 1.027
est 12% abv
my bitterness ratio is .068 IBU/SG
ok, i know hte malt is out of control and hte hops are inadequate. i didnt do hte right calculations to make it work out initially. Ok, so now i'm in the primary and going at a brutal bubbling. :rockin: but as you can see my hop situation is going to be all fouled up. my question is this... if i dry hop the pants off of this thing will it help? i'm not a "is my beer OK????" kinda guy. i just relax and have a beer. but damn, this this is expensive and it turns out that my math is bad when i drink! hahah ok, what do you guys think. high alpha hops in the secondary? how many ounces? thanks

Dry hopping wont really give you any bitterness, just aroma and some flavor.

That aside, what was your hop schedule?

Dry hopping won't do much for the bitterness; alpha acids need to boil to isomerize.

The only real solution (other than drink what you made) is to brew another batch, overhopped, and blend them.

Just call it "chocolate scotch ale" or something like that. Dry hopping will not add any bitterness. It will add hop aroma, but aroma doesn't balance malt, bitterness does. Perhaps you could make a hop tea by boiling hops in a small volume of water and add that?? Just a thought.

what if i boil about 5 oz of high alpha hops in about 1 gal of water, let it cool, and then add to the primary/secondary?

I am by no means an expert, but could you just boil some hops in a little water and add while trying not to oxygenate too much?

thats what i was thinking. i know that hop utilization ( if thats the right word) goes down depending on the gravity of the liquid. I dont know what would happen when i added this much hops to like, 1 gallon. Who knows? i could sure use some help on that end.

eschatz said:

my bitterness ratio is .068 IBU/SG

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Sounds awfully low unless you added those 3.5 ounces of hops in the last five minutes.

When did you put the hops in? The numbers you have just don't look right. 3 ounces of Sterlings at 60 should put you in the 25 IBU range.

I would move at a 1/4 gallon at a time. Remember you're not just adding hop "tea", your diluting the gravity.

If I were up against the wall, I'd take it in stages.

Boil .5 ounce of a high alpha (13-15%) in a 1/4 gallon of water (final volume) for 45 minutes.

Add it to the fermenter. Give it time to mix & blend and then taste.

Repeat as necessary till you're satisfied you've got adequate "bite".

Trying to fix the beer in one step isn't very scientific and you can't undo too much bittering.

Oh...and pony up for Beersmith.

david_42 said:

When did you put the hops in? The numbers you have just don't look right. 3 ounces of Sterlings at 60 should put you in the 25 IBU range.

Click to expand...

Beersmith gives me a 39 IBU at 60 minutes.

I'm not 100% sure on this but I thought there was something about the ph of a wort which helps extract bittering compounds from hops, this (I think) is part of the reason why when doing a late extract addition you still add part of the extract at the beginning of the boil. Like I said I think this is right, so you may want to get more info before you simply consider boiling the hops in water for a period of time, you may need to add a small amount of extract to the boil to achieve level of bitterness you want.

Sorry, I completely misread your recipe and only didn't even see the 3 oz of sterling in there. You might not be in that bad of shape, its not like you want a whole lot of hop aroma or flavor in this beer. I don't know but I would probably wait a couple weeks and give the beer a taste before going through the effort to make any additions which might not have a great effect on the final product.

Or boil the hops in water for an hour, then add some DME for a couple minutes. That way you're not dropping the SG too much.

I think you need to download Beersmith. This does not look right to me.
So I did the quick calc. in beersmith and this is what I came up with.
I "guessed" on a 6 gal boil with a 5 gal batch size, giving it the OG and the hops which I also guessed at for boil times. It gave me 57.9 IBU's. Which with that OG and malt bill I would be fine with it.

6 gal boil
5 gal batch
OG = 1.118


Sterling @ 7.5%aau @ 3oz for 60 minutes = 55.2IBU's
Saaz @ 4%aau @ .5oz for 20minutes = 2.7IBU's
Giving you 57.9 IBU's

ummm..... that doesn't sound right. I'm not that knowledgeable yet but something is off on that math with the IBU... majorly. Unless I missed something.
Beersmith is my friend! Just wish the calendar would sync with outlook(phone) or sunbird (for computer)

If you're bottle conditioning, you can boil some hops with your priming solution DME (a bit more dilute than usual to help extraction). That way you're not diluting any more than you would be anyway.