Vanilla Porter too sweet

[brewbrah]

8 Lbs Pale Liquid Malt Extract

Specialty Grains steeped at 155F for 20 minutes:
1 lb Roasted Barley
1 lb Crystal 60
8 oz Chocolate
8 oz Cherry Smoked
8 oz Victory
Bittering Hops: 1 oz Willamette
Aroma Hops: 1 oz Willamette
Added 3 vanilla beans soaked in vodka in secondary.
OG: 1.064
FG:1.016
IBU: 22

Tasted a sample while transferring to secondary and it tasted sweet even though it hit the recommended FG. Was there not enough bittering hops in this recipe? any help would be nice.

 

[bucketnative]

I think you undershot your bitterness by quite a bit. I think Willamette averages about 5% AA. If you input this into a recipe calculator (http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/), you only get about 8 IBU, which is well below where it should be for a porter (~30 IBU).

 

[McKnuckle]

Without tasting it, one can see that the BU:GU ratio is only 0.34, which is pretty low.

Brown porter has BJCP guidelines of 18-35 IBU, but that's with a lower OG between 1.040-52. You can see the lowest IBU and highest gravity basically matches your BU:GU ratio, but I wouldn't have aimed for those extremes.

 

[brewbrah]

I think you undershot your bitterness by quite a bit. I think Willamette averages about 5% AA. If you input this into a recipe calculator (http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/), you only get about 8 IBU, which is well below where it should be for a porter (~30 IBU).

Well. . .i am f'ed . i need to kick up the bitterness. Know a good way to add hops after primary and secondary fermentation?

 

[SmokeyMcBong]

Boil some more hops in a little plain water for an hour or so and add it to your secondary...

 

[brewbrah]

Boil some more hops in a little plain water for an hour or so and add it to your secondary...

Okay, easy enough. I need some kind of calculation to know how much to add. If I am at 18 IBU according to http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/ and I want to be at 25-30 IBU. So lets say I want to kick it up 10 IBU's how many ounces of hops do I need to boil? What will the boil size be?

 

[20grit]

How long was your original boil?

 

[McKnuckle]

This is tricky. Here's how I think I'd do it:

Use the IBU calc on the Brewer's Friend site: http://www.brewersfriend.com/ibu-calculator/

Let's say you want to dilute with a minimal amount of water, one cup for example (0.06 gallons). You need to boil for one hour and end up with 0.06 gallons - that would be your batch size. If your boil-off rate is 0.5 gal/hr, start with a boil size of 0.56 gallons.

Now, if you play with a dilution calculator, you'll see that if you have 5 gallons of beer at 22 IBU, and you're adding a cup of bittered water, that cup will need to have around 400 IBU in order to balance the mixed volume at 26 IBU.

Figure out how much of your hops to boil so the IBU calculator tells you the bittering will be 400 IBU. It's about 0.125 oz at 6-8 AA%. You'll need to play with the calculator and figure it out for your volumes, boil-off, and hops. Don't forget that the SG of your boil is 1.000, plain water.

HTH even though it sounds a bit complicated.

 

[brewbrah]

How long was your original boil?

60 mins full boil 6 gallons to right around 5

 

[brewbrah]

This is tricky. Here's how I think I'd do it:

Use the IBU calc on the Brewer's Friend site: http://www.brewersfriend.com/ibu-calculator/

Let's say you want to dilute with a minimal amount of water, one cup for example (0.06 gallons). You need to boil for one hour and end up with 0.06 gallons - that would be your batch size. If your boil-off rate is 0.5 gal/hr, start with a boil size of 0.56 gallons.

Now, if you play with a dilution calculator, you'll see that if you have 5 gallons of beer at 22 IBU, and you're adding a cup of bittered water, that cup will need to have around 400 IBU in order to balance the mixed volume at 26 IBU.

Figure out how much of your hops to boil so the IBU calculator tells you the bittering will be 400 IBU. It's about 0.125 oz at 6-8 AA%. You'll need to play with the calculator and figure it out for your volumes, boil-off, and hops. Don't forget that the SG of your boil is 1.000, plain water.

HTH even though it sounds a bit complicated.

You sir are getting me on track, thank you. Do you think I should use my original hop? Or should I go with something new?