Fixing Malty brew

Ok well I had some of my kegs filled at a local brew pub for a birthday party .. ( my stock was running low ) one of the brews they gave me I cant stand. I have to fix it somehow. Its as light in color as a blonde but has an ABV of 9.5% it reminds me of that high gravity steel reserve but not quite as bad .. I am not a malt guy at all so I have to fix it .. First thought is to dry hop the hell out of it, but I wonder how many oz's of hops it would take .. I buy them by the pound, and have plenty in the freezer but I dont want to use a pound per keg and still have a nasty result .. second though it to water it down by 1/2 ... double the volume, taking the ABV to a sane level and ad some more hops, hell I could even boil them in 5 gallons of empty water for an hour to get a good amount of IBU's in there ... Has anyone ever done something like this before ?

Adding water could work. I'd make sure to boil it first to remove any oxygen....otherwise, it'll likely oxidize the final beer.

wonderbread23 said:

Adding water could work. I'd make sure to boil it first to remove any oxygen....otherwise, it'll likely oxidize the final beer.

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I'll brew premium american lager and dilute part of the batch to standard or light strength. I just use soda water or seltzer water, whichever doesn't have added minerals. This has the advantage of being already carbonated and oxygen free and the disadvantage of costing 50 cents a liter.

I don't know what size keg you're talking about, but a pound of hops is serious overkill. You would be good with 1-3 oz for that amount of beer.

I've "fixed" a barleywine that was too sweet by boiling hops on the stove and adding. If you are putting straight into the fermenter (keg), you might consider putting this bitter mix into the fridge for a few days to get the hop material to fall out of suspension, then just pouring the clear stuff into the keg.

The dryhopping idea probably won't work as it won't add any bitterness, only some minor flavor and a lot of aroma. Hop oils have to be isomerized (by boiling) in order to be soluble in beer.

passedpawn said:

I've "fixed" a barleywine that was too sweet by boiling hops on the stove and adding. If you are putting straight into the fermenter (keg), you might consider putting this bitter mix into the fridge for a few days to get the hop material to fall out of suspension, then just pouring the clear stuff into the keg.

The dryhopping idea probably won't work as it won't add any bitterness, only some minor flavor and a lot of aroma. Hop oils have to be isomerized (by boiling) in order to be soluble in beer.

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Exactly what I was thinking dry hopping the current kegs wont work well enough to balance out teh funk .... I have 10 gallons of nasty 9.5% brew. I think I am going to boil six gallons of water down to 5 gallons, with enough hops to equal about 150 IBU's, then mix this with the ten gallons to get 15 gallons in the 6% 50 IBU range .. Is my logic correct, will the IBU's divide evenly like that ?