Imperial IPA - what did I do wrong?

[heckler73]

I made this IIPA as my second extract brew, and it's the only one of my eight batches I have to choke down. It's very "boozy" tasting, and gives a pretty good headache if you have too many. It's pretty good as a 4th or 5th beer on a Saturday night (when you're not getting out of bed before 11), but as a first beer, it's awful.

I didn't measure the OG or FG (what a noob), and it was 7 days in primary, 12 days in secondary.

It's now been 10 weeks in bottles, and the boozy taste is still there.

Imperial IPA O.G. - 1.080
13 lb Pale Malt Extract
0.65 Biscuit malt
1.5 oz Zeuz whole
(1 hour) 2.5 oz Chinook whole finishing hops (15 min)
1 oz Cascade Dry hops (Into secondary when racked)

Nottingham dry Ale Yeast (1 packet dry pitched straight into wort)


What can I do better next time?

 

[frazier]

What temp did you ferment at? You should probably try to hold it below 65.

 

[SittingDuck]

What was your fermentation temp? Mash temp? We need more infocto evaluate.

 

[heckler73]

Fermentation temp would have been around 68-70F ambient.

Mash temp??? Do you mean pitching temperature?

 

[OSUmoney83]

that seems like a lot of extract for the yeast to handle straight from the pack. I haven't used Nottingham before but I rehydrated us-05 on a big IPA yesterday and had activity in less than 2 hours.

I plan on going at least two weeks in the primary, no secondary. Maybe that would help.

 

[SittingDuck]

Fermentation temp would have been around 68-70F ambient.

Mash temp??? Do you mean pitching temperature?[/QUOTE

No, I meant temp you mashed/steeped the grains. Drank too much tonight to clearly read your post and see you did primarily extract.

 

[nymtber]

I woulda pitched two packets of dry into that. Probably even re-hydrated them (I never do, but might be a good idea with a big beer). Also, if the air temp of your room was 68-70, I almost guarantee the beer itself was near 75. I currently have a Kolsch fermenting in a basement with ambient of 55, and the temp probe (sitting on the carboy) is reading a hair over 60 inside the fermentation chamber (2" foam board box) however the mini-fridge could be kicking on and I just don't know about it.

Not sure about nottingham, but it has about the same temp range as US-05, which I prefer to keep at 62-65F, and I pitch that yeast around 70.

 

[dcp27]

Fermentation temp would have been around 68-70F ambient.

notty doesnt taste very good >70F and active fermentation will raise wort temps a few degrees. unless its belgian, wheat, or saison, keep it <70F wort temp for at least the first 48 hours, otherwise you run the risk of excess esters and fusels (your boozy taste)

 

[EllisTX]

99% chance that your off flavors are coming from the stress you put your yeast through. That is a high ambient temp and a low pitch rate. Head over to Mrmalty.com next time and use the yeast pitching rate calculator.

 

[terrapinj]

a longer primary will help clean up some of the off flavors as well - once you rack to secondary you are removing a lot of the yeast that is needed to clean up off flavors from underpitching and excessive ferm temps

 

[D_Ranged_Eskimo]

Everyone else has already touched on it, but you should let the primary go for 3 weeks, drop your ambient temp to 5 below the temp at which you are looking to ferment at (i.e. if you want to ferment at 68, try and hold an ambient temp around 63), and pitch more yeast.

 

[mewithstewpid]

with a beer that big, longer primary (as stated previously). Just let it age out in the bottle come back to it in another month (or 8!) and see then.