Adding Bitterness Post Bottling

[samdjenn]

Alright sports fans, I under hopped my hefeweizen. I am thinking of making a hop tea and adding an amount to help balance an otherwise cloying beer. Any suggestions on how to accomplish this?

Thinking out loud (so to speak) I could plug the recipe into a calculator and determine the IBU's required. I overshot my OG by 10 points, so I could reverse engineer the my real world IBU's and make a tea to make up for the extra 10 points. I can see a problem with deciding how much tea to add to each bottle, by volume, as I primarily bottled this batch in 500mL swing tops. Ideas? How many IBU's per oz/mL of water (depending of AA%)

Looking forward to the fount of knowledge.

 

[AlCophile]

When I screw up the hopping I rely on my trusty alcohol extract of hops. I use 70% EtOH, probably not available to you, so: Try vodka, or if you can buy grain neutral spirits, try that. I'd suggest 150 proof rum, but that will introduce additional flavors.
I suggest alcohol extracts because I suspect water alone won't get enough flavor out of the hops, so, you will wind up seriously diluting the beer.; all hop flavor compounds are organic molecules, and prefer not to dissolve in water, only slightly.
You can make an extract from any hop, and, using a dropper, you can measure with some precision.
If you add too much, the XS will cloud up and (eventually) sink to the bottom. It won't kill you, but too much will give you diarrhea. Good luck.

 

[duboman]

A couple questions:
Extract with top off water or all grain?
Cloyingly sweet? Are you sure the beer is done fermenting, what's the FG and what yeast? Starter?

Hefe is not an overly bitter/hoppy beer, the yeast derives the flavor really


Sent from the Commune

 

[Wynne-R]

The OP mentioned “real world IBU’s”. ALCophile mentioned “hop flavor compounds”. I don’t think they’re talking about the same thing. Don’t you have to boil hops to isomerize alpha acids to produce bittering?

Also, I’m not sure what is meant by hard to get 70% EtOH. As far as I know EtOH is shorthand for ‘ethanol’ and 190 proof everclear is widely available.

I make a hop tea but it’s not for bittering.

 

[samdjenn]

A couple questions:
Extract with top off water or all grain?
Cloyingly sweet? Are you sure the beer is done fermenting, what's the FG and what yeast? Starter?

Hefe is not an overly bitter/hoppy beer, the yeast derives the flavor really


Sent from the Commune

Extract with top off, 4 gallon boil. I used White Labs 380, OG was 1.072, final was 1.020, no starter (dumb of me).

I've had it bottle conditioning now for 2 weeks. I think fermented a little too hot, the beer tastes like a banana bomb, which doesn't help with the sweetness.

I really dont think I can drink 5ish gallons of this without doing something to attenuate the sweetness.

 

[duboman]

Extract with top off, 4 gallon boil. I used White Labs 380, OG was 1.072, final was 1.020, no starter (dumb of me).

I've had it bottle conditioning now for 2 weeks. I think fermented a little too hot, the beer tastes like a banana bomb, which doesn't help with the sweetness.

I really dont think I can drink 5ish gallons of this without doing something to attenuate the sweetness.

So first off your OG was not 1.070, it was whatever the recipe stated it would be. You got a bad mix of wort and top off water.

Extract has a fixed gravity contribution so your mixing issue is typical when using top off water.

Second, you got a banana bomb due to the high fermentation temperature as that produces pronounced banana flavors. As for a starter, yes it's important but many will purposely under pitch Hefe strains to produce the desired esters although coupled with the high temps it's probably extreme.

Finishing at 1.020 is a common issue with extract but if the beer is cloyingly sweet it seems to me that it was stalled, not finished and that could be for several reasons. If the beer is already in the bottles conditioning it will be difficult to add any sort of bitterness unless you were to dose each pour with some sort of hop tea. If you were to uncap each bottle and try to do this you will lose some carbonation in the process of dosing and after re-capping there might not be enough left for the beer to properly finish carbonating and conditioning.

It sounds like you might need to chalk this one up to experience The only other thing I'll add is the concern of bottle bombs if in fact the beer wasn't done fermenting. That being said you might be able to dose the bottles and recap but it's a crap shoot at best IMVHO.

 

[samdjenn]

So first off your OG was not 1.070, it was whatever the recipe stated it would be. You got a bad mix of wort and top off water.

Extract has a fixed gravity contribution so your mixing issue is typical when using top off water.

Second, you got a banana bomb due to the high fermentation temperature as that produces pronounced banana flavors. As for a starter, yes it's important but many will purposely under pitch Hefe strains to produce the desired esters although coupled with the high temps it's probably extreme.

Finishing at 1.020 is a common issue with extract but if the beer is cloyingly sweet it seems to me that it was stalled, not finished and that could be for several reasons. If the beer is already in the bottles conditioning it will be difficult to add any sort of bitterness unless you were to dose each pour with some sort of hop tea. If you were to uncap each bottle and try to do this you will lose some carbonation in the process of dosing and after re-capping there might not be enough left for the beer to properly finish carbonating and conditioning.

It sounds like you might need to chalk this one up to experience The only other thing I'll add is the concern of bottle bombs if in fact the beer wasn't done fermenting. That being said you might be able to dose the bottles and recap but it's a crap shoot at best IMVHO.

Im a little confused on your OG statement. My recipe called for an OG of 1.060, but using a hydrometer and correcting for temps, I measured it at 1.072. Am I missing something when measuring OG?

As for the stall, how would I be able to tell? I took measurements four days apart, and both were 1.020.

I know this is starting to become a multipoint response, but do you all ferment at the yeast manufacturer's ideal temp range, or always keep it the same? White labs said ideal temp range was 66-70F and I was consistently at 68F.

Thanks again.

 

[duboman]

Im a little confused on your OG statement. My recipe called for an OG of 1.060, but using a hydrometer and correcting for temps, I measured it at 1.072. Am I missing something when measuring OG?

As for the stall, how would I be able to tell? I took measurements four days apart, and both were 1.020.

I know this is starting to become a multipoint response, but do you all ferment at the yeast manufacturer's ideal temp range, or always keep it the same? White labs said ideal temp range was 66-70F and I was consistently at 68F.

Thanks again.

Ok,
Both DME and LME have a fixed gravity contribution of 44-45 and 35-36 gravity points per pound. In other words, 1 lb of DME in 1 gallon of water will yield a gravity of 1.045 or 1.035 respectively. So for a 5 gallon batch each would yield 9 points or 7 points to the batch.

When doing a partial boil extract kit and using top off water post boil you are trying to get a thorough mix between the more dense wort and the less dense water which is difficult. Assuming you hit your proper final volume the gravity contribution of the extracts is a fixed amount regardless of what you read via hydrometer. In other words you got a high reading because your sample contained more dense wort and read high.

As for the yeast, typically you want to stay within the range provided but saying that, the higher you range the more esters and phenols can be produced by the strain as it ferments. For Hefe yeast that means more banana notes at higher temps and more clove notes at lower temps typically.

As for cloyingly sweet, that usually means incomplete fermentation and this could have been discovered when sampling for final gravity by taste. If it was noted at that point then action should have been taken to address it prior to packaging either by raising temps and rousing yeast, more time or in difficult situations a re-pitch of yeast or something to get it fully attenuated.

There are various factors involved that can create an extract batch to stop at 1.020 such as poor aeration, no starter, less than fresh ingredients and finally, what the extract is actually made up of, meaning some less than fermentable malts such as high amounts of crystal. Either way, a batch that tastes cloyingly sweet at the supposed FG tells me that it most likely wasn't done.

When I did extract brewing I too had some batches that finished at 1.020 but never were they cloyingly sweet. Are you sure you are just not put off by the banana bomb taste that you are perceiving as overly sweet? Also, keep in mind that once the beer is properly carbonated and conditioned the taste and mouthfeel will change and most likely improve although the big banana flavor may not mellow too much.