American Hazelnut Brown Ale IBU's?

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colhep67

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So I really wanted to brew a hazelnut brown ale and so I took a trip to my local brew shop. They had discount brew kits from BSG (never tried them before) so i purchased their American Brown Ale kit and I purchased a small bottle of hazelnut essence.

I brewed the beer yesterday and it is now fermenting very well in my fermentation chamber.

My question is the IBU's for the BSG kit state 85-95. That seems high to me for a brown ale. Is that high?

Should I consider just brewing this normal and adding the hazelnut essence to another brown ale with lower IBU's later? Or just try it out (the bitterness might work well with a sweet hint)?
 
Here is a pic of the ingredients and specs.

ForumRunner_20131211_234100.jpg
 
American ales are typically higher in bitterness than the English counterpart. It does seem to be a rather hoppy brown ale though.

I would add the hazelnut to a brown ale with less hop bitterness and aroma. High bitterness may mask the hazelnut flavor or change the hazelnut profile to something unpalatable.
A traditional South English nut brown ale may be a better choice for the flavoring.
 
Seems really high. I would expect IBUs in the 20s for a brown ale.

I have a recipe for rogue's hazelnut brown I can dig out if you want it
 
Do you think it might be a misprint? Do the IBU's match with the hop additives?
 
The BJCP style guide for American Brown Ale (Category 10C) calls for IBUs in the range of 20-40. The kit seems to fall within the recommend alcohol and color ranges for the style, but it's definitely out of whack on the IBU front. The BJCP style guide does mention that some ABAs can be fairly hoppy, although it considers those to be Specialty Beers.

As mentioned above, I don't see how you get that many IBUs from such a small quantity of bittering hops.

Maybe that's why the kit was on sale. :)
 
The BJCP style guide for American Brown Ale (Category 10C) calls for IBUs in the range of 20-40. The kit seems to fall within the recommend alcohol and color ranges for the style, but it's definitely out of whack on the IBU front. The BJCP style guide does mention that some ABAs can be fairly hoppy, although it considers those to be Specialty Beers.

As mentioned above, I don't see how you get that many IBUs from such a small quantity of bittering hops.

Maybe that's why the kit was on sale. :)

That may be why lol
 
There's just no way the IBU's are that high. It's definitely a misprint. I'd guess it's within specs.
 
Should I just taste it when fermentation is done and make a decision about adding hazelnut then?
 
Sounds like an excellent idea. I think it'll be good to go, so I'd plan on using it.
 
I'm not familiar with Galena hops, and am assuming they are low AA% hops as the others are, but I seriously doubt if you used all of those hops at 60 mins you'd get that many IBU's.
 
So I read into this a little more. The galena hops have an AA of 13.8%. When I plugged in my hops into an IBU calculator it came up with 55!

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Home Brew mobile app
 
Let us know how it turns out. That still seems high for the style.

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