First post, second batch, no hop bitterness

Hello all, just joined yesterday.

My first batch was Cooper's IPA extract, and it came out pretty good, considering. I naively watered it down to 6 gallons, which gave me an OG of 40, and so it was understandably "weak" in every way, but otherwise drinkable. Apparently I'm capable of brewing something that at least resembles beer

My second batch didn't go so well. This one is a partial grain recipe IPA. Target OG is 68, and I got 60. I stopped it at 12, so I guess the ABV is 6-ish. But it tastes more like a hefe than anything else. Just no hop bitterness or aroma at all. I added 1/2 oz of pellet "magnum" at boil, 1/2 oz Cascade at 30 minutes, 1/2 oz Cascade at 15, and a full oz Cascade at 5 minutes. The claimed IBU is 68.8. I'm guessing this is more like IBU 11

I can think of a couple things I did that *might* not be right. First off, I wound up letting the hops sit around in the house for several hours in their boiling bags. Second, I boiled lightly with a lid. Sometimes I see people refer to a "rolling" boil, and that isn't what I did. I maintained 212* and watched the water churn a little, but that's it.

Do either of those things sound like a factor? What else could cause the hops to pretty much not do anything?

Should I try and dry hop the keg? How much should I toss in?

The first IPA I brewed, I used a hop bag, and the hops were WAY too tight in the bags, and I think I lost almost all of my bitterness due to it. I use a very large bag now, and make sure the hops are loose in them, rather than compacted all to one end.

agree with above post. also bittering hops is the 1st addition @60 min and I would think an IPA would use a full 1 oz not a 1/2....

I also have read and practice NOT using a lid unless I fear stuff getting in my wort (which is never....) I am not 100% sure on the reason but all the guru's say NO. good enough for me.

You don't want to use a lid, because you're trying to drive/boil off DMS and other things that are off tasting in the wort. Capturing them with the lid defeats the purpose of the long boil.

Was it a full boil?

If not you would really need to up your bittering hops.

BuonAnno said:

Was it a full boil?

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As in a full hour? Yes.

CrustyBrau said:

As in a full hour? Yes.

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Full volume, not duration.

CrustyBrau said:

As in a full hour? Yes.

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I was actually asking if you boiled 6.5 gallons to reach a total of 5 or if you did a partial boil (1-3 gallons) and topped it off with cold water to reach your total volume.

When I first started I would do the partial boil of 3 gallons with extract and top it off with cold water to reach 5 gallons. I would have to up my bittering hops by an ounce or two depending on the recipe.

tamoore said:

Full volume, not duration.

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Ah. Uh, I started around 4 gallons, then added the extracts. So it would have been close to 5 at start of boil. I needed quite a bit to get back to five when transferring to the fermenter, but I didn't pay much attention to how much.

So with a lower volume boil, I would need more hops?

CrustyBrau said:

So with a lower volume boil, I would need more hops?

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Yep. Others may have different opinions but in my experience adding additional water seems to hurt bittering hops much more than aroma. I find that I may need to add an extra ounce to the bittering addition but only a half ounce or so to the 15 minute addition.

Well, I have a 10-gallon boiler, so at least doing a full boil in the future won't be an issue. I would never have figured water volume would have such an effect.

Which will be getting a sight glass now, I think.

BuonAnno said:

Yep. Others may have different opinions but in my experience adding additional water seems to hurt bittering hops much more than aroma. I find that I may need to add an extra ounce to the bittering addition but only a half ounce or so to the 15 minute addition.

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This is explained by you can only infuse so much of the hops bitterness into the water before it reaches an equilibrium. When you add in unhopped water (I pray it was boiled 1st) this does not make it the same as boiling the full volume.

5gal water + 1oz hops for 60 min = IBU of Z
3 gallons water + 1oz hops for 60 min + 2 gallons water = IBU of X

X<Z because water can only hold Y amount of IBU at a time from the 1 oz of hops.

I'm using bottled water, straight into the fermenter. Distilled that is.

CrustyBrau said:

I'm using bottled water, straight into the fermenter. Distilled that is.

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There is another issue. Distilled water your brew house efficiency drops quite a bit 10-25% using distilled water as it has no minerals and other things that yeast like, this can also cause a very "weak" beer. Try mineral water next time unless you are actually "building water" (adding minerals into distilled water.)

Many people say that bottle water is good to use without boiling, I read that some bottled water is simply tap water. I boil it all until I actually start building my own water profiles as mentioned above...

Zamial said:

This is explained by you can only infuse so much of the hops bitterness into the water before it reaches an equilibrium. When you add in unhopped water (I pray it was boiled 1st) this does not make it the same as boiling the full volume.

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Let's try the other direction. What if I start with 6 or 7 gallons, but it boils away to 4. Can the bitterness disappear in that case, causing it to be weak when I bring it back to 5? In other words, should I be careful to make sure the pot never drops below 5 gallons during the boil?


You guys rock. Thanks for all the good info so far

I believe the equation is 1/2 a gallon per hour boiling for evaporation.

So, if you were going to boil a 5 gallon batch of beer you should start with 5.5 gallons if boiling for 1 hour.

As for more hops in the water and then boiling down, I have never done that or read about anyone that has. I am guessing that if that was a good idea more people would be doing it. I do not want to risk a batch to figure it out how the boil redux would work...lol. However, people do dry hop to get more hopiness into the beer. I think this is possible because when this is done (at secondary) it is not water anymore it is alcohol and rules for the IBU distribution change to allow more IBU into the solution (your beer).