Will overly malty taste mellow over time?

I brewed Midwest's IIPA as my first all grain. Among the many blunders were experimenting with mash temps with a new system and removing off the yeast cake too soon. I tried a two step mash, figured if one is good two must be great! Sheesh. Mash temps were way off and my fermentation was stuck at 1.030 with a 1.065 OG using WL Cali Ale. Used Nottingham dry yeast to get gravity down to 1.024. Hydrometer read 1.024 for a week. Decided to go ahead a keg.

Back to original question. Will the overly malty taste mellow or do I need to feed this to the wife's book club. She doesn't realize she's in a drinking club.

Anyway, below is the recipe.

Ingredients:
14 lbs. Domestic 2-Row barley malt
4 oz. Aromatic
12 oz. Caramel 60°L
8 oz. Victory

1 oz. Chinook - 60 mins
.5 oz. Cascade - 45 mins
.5 oz. Centennial - 30 mins
.5 oz. Cascade - 20 mins
.5 oz. Centennial - 10 mins
1 oz. Crystal - 5 mins
2 oz. whole hops (dry hop)

Mash
145F for 30 mins but missed the 155F and mashed at over 160F for 30 mins.

I've made a PM version of this and it was great.

By mashing at 145F you made a less malty beer because of the few unfermentables. The other adjuncts make the maltiness. It will get less pronounced maltiness the longer it is aged. With 14 lbs of malt it may be somewhat strong too. It will be very tasty and some women just don't like either strong or too malty unless they love beer.

Hang in there. It's a medium learning curve to get your process dialed in but once you do you will have some very good beer. That recipe looks very tasty with that hop schedule and I love all those hop varieties.

I had a sample or two last night and I already notice an improvement from last week. In another 3 weeks to a month it should be really good. Glad I made 10 gals.



Lee

When I don't like one of my brews I just let it sit around longer until I like it. I've never thrown one out....never say never. Then again I might not be too discriminating;-)
I think you need a new hydrometer. I don't think you can get an OG that high with 14 lbs of grain in a 10 gallon batch of beer. With the recipe you posted I would expect it to be hoppy. Your beer should be around 1.045, IBUs over 40 Check your hydro w/ water.

Actually, my efficiency was really low. I doubled that recipe for two 5 gal batches, around 30 lbs of grain. It was a quick cut and paste from Midwest's website and I forgot to add that critical piece of info.

It was my first time all grain. I had never used my MLT before so I missed temps during the sparge also.

The good news is a month ago I made a Barley Wine that I just racked over to secondary after a month in the primary. Its incredibly smooth plus I dialed in my system a little tighter with 70% efficiency. On to the Belgian Pale Ale.

LeeF said:

Actually, my efficiency was really low. I doubled that recipe for two 5 gal batches, around 30 lbs of grain. It was a quick cut and paste from Midwest's website and I forgot to add that critical piece of info.

It was my first time all grain. I had never used my MLT before so I missed temps during the sparge also.

The good news is a month ago I made a Barley Wine that I just racked over to secondary after a month in the primary. Its incredibly smooth plus I dialed in my system a little tighter with 70% efficiency. On to the Belgian Pale Ale.

Click to expand...

30 LBS of grain for 10 gallons would be a very strong beer. What are you using to calculate everything? It is very easy to hit temperatures, alcohol and IBU's if you are using Beersmith. I hope you wrote down the temperature of the strike water, quarts of strike water, grain temperature as well as the mash temperature obtained so you can adjust so you will hit your temperatures dead on next brew. Keeping a tablet handy can be a good reference for your future brewing. Stir any and all water or mash just before taking a temperature reading. You have to get hot and colder spots to equalize to get accurate readings.

It was the first AG and notes were the last thing on my mind. Although, I did take some. A month later I brewed the Barley Wine and hit the my temps nuts on and kept better notes. My big mistake was I needed to figure out the temperament of my system before being too experimental. Lesson learned.

I suspect you are smelling the Aromatic as well. It's powerful stuff, but it should fade.