Amber Ale - sweetness remedy...

[jons_brew_shack]

Evening people, new to brewing 2 kits in, 3rd is fermenting and am not far off moving up to all grain via a smash brew...

Anyway my query is a simple one, just about to bottle a Coopers Amber Ale kit, I hop tea'd it with 1oz of Citra and dry hopped with a similar quality.

Just sampled the beer before bottling at the weekend and its turned out reasonably but in hindsight should have incorporated some sort of bitter hop varietal for the tea and just used the Citra for flavour and aroma at dry hop stage - schoolboy mistake maybe!

What I'm left with isn't undrinkable; it has good orange peel and slightly melony nose, good deep colour and taste is not unpleasant tropical fruity ness, with a little astringency but without bitterness or anything to really cling to its a bit one dimensional, sweet and thin - can anyone suggest a spice or additive that might make it a bit more interesting?

I've put a glass in the fridge with some crushed cardamon seed as an experiment... Your thoughts are welcome???

Thanks Jon

 

[boydster]

You could look for some isomerized hop extract - that can be added directly to the beer without boiling. Haven't tried it myself, but it is supposed to be pretty strong stuff so you would want to be careful with it.

 

[jons_brew_shack]

You could look for some isomerized hop extract - that can be added directly to the beer without boiling. Haven't tried it myself, but it is supposed to be pretty strong stuff so you would want to be careful with it.

Thanks for the suggestion Boyd!

 

[TopherM]

You could look for some isomerized hop extract - that can be added directly to the beer without boiling. Haven't tried it myself, but it is supposed to be pretty strong stuff so you would want to be careful with it.

My ghetto way of accomplishing this same thing is to put 0.5-1.0 oz of hops in a filter in the coffee maker and run the coffee maker cycle with about 4 cups of water. Cool the hop tea to the same temp as the beer, and add it!

You can do the same process with any spice. Because you already have orange peel, maybe crushed coriander would be a good addition?

 

[ThatGeekGuy]

You could always dry hop it again with a high alpha hop like Simcoe, this would add some bitterness along with aroma.

 

[boydster]

Dry hopping it won't isomerize the alpha acids, so mainly that would be adding flavor and aroma. The hop tea-coffee-type-thing would certainly accomplish the goal, though. It would be interesting to know what the saturation point of alpha acid in water is... I should really look that up...