Too Bitter

Brewed up my spice Christmas ale last night and accidentally grabbed my 1oz pack of Nugget instead of Cascade hops. Needless to say after a 50 min boil, its quite bitter. I sampled the wort before adding 6Oz MD, after adding MD and then after adding my spices and cooling. It was more and more bitter each time.

Is there anything I can do at this point (primary) that will offset that much bitter? As it is it is almost drying. I plan to bottle 3 weeks before Christmas so I have a nice bit of time. It should go to secondary next Fri.

Using the WYeast London strain.

Bitterness will fade with time, but maybe not enough.

You could boil up a mini batch of h20 and ME with no hops and add it to the fermenter if you still have room, and the yeast is still active.

Yep, you could up it to a 6 or 6.5 gal batch by adding more extract and water. Would cut down the IBU's significantly.

Reviving this thread, I'm having a similar problem. My beer has been fermenting for about 3 weeks now and I just realized that I had entered something like 1.7 gallons as the boil size in Beer Smith, when really it was 6. Result: my brown ale has 44.1 Ibus instead of the 19 I was aiming for.

I would brew a 1.5 gallons batch without any hops and throw that in the fermenter, according to Beersmith that would cut down the bitterness to 31 IBU's.

Does my logic make sense? Any other way to cut down the bitterness?

Did you taste it yet?

Another option would be to brew a much lower IBU batch and mix the two. I would bottle/keg part of each to keep as a control, then mix it to get what you wanted for bitterness levels. Or, you could just brew something else and mix them when you're pulling pints (good reason to get into kegging)... Once you get the mix to your liking, you can brew a batch with that ratio of each.

I always triple check my numbers in BeerSmith long before it's actually brew-day... Mostly because I'm gathering ingredients to go over to my brew-buddy's place. I really don't want any surprises once I get there.

samc said:

Did you taste it yet?

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Yes, it is too bitter, it would be fine for me but I brewed it for someone who prefers low IBU beers.

I guess I'll be twice as careful next time I brew to make sure all my numbers are ok.

TomStew said:

Yes, it is too bitter, it would be fine for me but I brewed it for someone who prefers low IBU beers.

I guess I'll be twice as careful next time I brew to make sure all my numbers are ok.

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Simple solution is to dry hop the beer. Works wonders, I had a way over the top bitter IIPA and added a second round of dry hops which balanced the bitterness perceptions.

samc said:

Simple solution is to dry hop the beer. Works wonders, I had a way over the top bitter IIPA and added a second round of dry hops which balanced the bitterness perceptions.

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Good idea! Might do that, I'll tell you how it turned out. Thanks guys

It should mellow some by Christmas.