How can I add some hop bitterness after fermentation?

I made a batch of what I would call lightly red ale that I split into two fermenters. The recipe was primarily for a sour that I fermented with ECY bug farm. The other half of the batch got fermented with wyeast northwest ale.

I think my mash temps were a little higher than expected due to a thermometer problem so the beer finished much higher than I wanted - like 1.020. I am debating the use of amalyse enzyme to bring it down further. It was also so lightly hopped that it is super sweet. I did some dry hopping but the beer is so sweet it didn't have much effect.

Is there a way to add hop bitterness to a beer that is already (mostly) fermented?

As far as adding hops for bitterness, that option is kinda out of the picture since you can no longer isomerize them. I noticed with a robust porter that I did (I filled the fermenter too high so too much of the yeast blew off with the krausen during primary, causing it to finish too high and become to cloyingly sweet) that when I added cascade dry hops to it it actually lightened up the body and made it more drinkable. How much dry hops did you use/how long were they in during secondary?

I'd be careful about using the amalyse because once you put it in it doesn't stop eating away at the sugars. It needs to be heated up past somewhere around 160 degrees in order to denature the enzyme. So I would avoid that.

Lastly you could add some simple sugar to help lighten the body and dry the beer out, just boil it, let it cool and drop it in, and swirl the fermenter to get the yeast back in suspension.

You could also pitch some lager yeast, which has the ability to break down longer chain sugars than ale yeast (when you're looking for a workhorse to power through sugars you should pitch lager yeast over champagne yeast, since this is beer after all).

Have you tried making a hop tea and adding that?
Basically you boil hops in water and add the fluid to the batch

sieglere said:

Have you tried making a hop tea and adding that?
Basically you boil hops in water and add the fluid to the batch

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I've thought about this - I think it may be the best approach. I have about 4 gallons of beer left. What amount of hops in what amount of water should I use?

A buddy of mine had a keg that we were drinking....don't remember what it was but, it was kinda the same way. We just took some hops and threw them in the glass as we were drinking. I don't think it added a lot of flavor but the aroma was great.

rdneckbrew said:

A buddy of mine had a keg that we were drinking....don't remember what it was but, it was kinda the same way. We just took some hops and threw them in the glass as we were drinking. I don't think it added a lot of flavor but the aroma was great.

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And it was chewy.

One of my first hop teas I was adding to some Yuengling Amber to bring it up a notch was not filtered fine enough and man that texture of the hop particles was not pleasant. Like saw dust.

I didn't think it was to bad. Yes you occasionally would get a bit of hop leaf in your mouth but it was good.

So I ended up doing something different- I made a "chili tea". I have been wanting to make a chili beer for a while and I thought this was a good opportunity. I boiled a gallon of water with a variety of jalapeno, thai hot, serrano and some dried chilis. I filtered it through a cheese cloth and chilled it before adding it to the beer. At first it was obscenely spicy - so much so that I couldn't finish the glass - hence the new name "Firestater". I started blending it with other beers that I had on tap and it was pretty nice - I did about 10% chili beer to 90% other. After a few weeks, the chili spice has calmed down a lot and it's very nice on it's own.

Great idea on chili tea, I might try that, been wanting to make a LH Fade to Black clone for awhile.