Austin Apricot Wheat mini mash

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

nostalgia

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 9, 2008
Messages
2,397
Reaction score
114
Location
Port Murray, NJ
Greets! Just got through kegging Austin Homebrew's apricot wheat recipe kit. Brewday went well. OG came in at 1.050. FG 2 weeks later was 1.008 (the kit's instructions said 1.052/1.010).

I tasted the hydro sample today and there is pronounced hoppy bitterness. Not what I was expecting. My wife made the bitter beer face :)

So I'm fishing for a possible root cause. I've got 3 theories at the moment:

1. It's normal and will mellow with age.
2. Doing a late extract addition increased hop utilization.
3. I didn't get enough sugars in the mini-mash, making a lower gravity wort and increasing hop utilization.

I had considered that I didn't strain the wort so it was sitting on all of the hop pellets, but that shouldn't alter bitterness, correct?

I'm not going to post Forrest's whole recipe, but here's the timing and type of hops:

1oz Perle @60 minutes (half of LME added here)
1/2oz Mt Hood @15 minutes (rest of LME added here)
1/2oz Mt Hood @5 minutes

Yeast suggestions for the kit were WLP051, Wyeast 1272 or Notty. Forrest was out of Notty and shipped Cooper's ale yeast. Since I've heard only bad things about Cooper's I pitched Safale US-05.

Thanks for any suggestions,

-Joe
 
Late addition of extract will increase hop utilizatiopn by 25%. The beer just needs time to age and it will be fine. If a beer tastes right (as far as hops go) out of the secondary then the beer will be under hopped when it is ready to drink. I make the recipes to taste right after 2-3 weeks in the bottles or keg. This is after 2 weeks in the fermenters.

Forrest
 
My apricot wheat came out bitter as sin after 3 weeks in primary, with only 1oz Hersbrucker for bittering, nothing else. After 3 weeks in the keg, it mellowed way, way out. I vote give it time. :)
 
Thanks to both of you guys. I'm hopeful that it's the #1 answer, too :) I've got my keg of AHS ESB carbing now to keep me company until this one is done :tank:

-Joe
 
Late addition of extract will increase hop utilizatiopn by 25%.
A quick question about this - if I want to do a late extract addition to keep the beer light in color but want the IBUs to stay the same, should I knock some time off the boil to compensate for the higher hop utilization? 25%? 15 minutes?

Thanks!

-Joe
 
You don't want to decrease the time because then you won't have much of a bittering hop. You need to trim a little of the hops of each addition and still boil for 60 minutes.
 
Back
Top