Beer is very bitter

[ncc]

Hi everyone,

I decided to make my own beer instead of following a kit from my brew shop and overdid it on the bittering hops.

I am shooting for a pale or IPA.

Grains
1/4 lb vienna malt
1/4 lb munich malt
1/2 lb row 6 malt (American)

Malts
6 lbs Amber liquid malt extract
1 lb light dry malt extract

hops
saaz czech 1 oz 5 min
magnum 2 oz 60 min
cascade 1 oz 10 min

American west coast yeast

I started this beer on nov 8th.


I just transferred the beer to another carboy to let the sediment settle out and tasted it while doing so and it's very bitter. I suspect 2 oz of bittering hops was too much. Is there anything I can add to mellow out the flavor?

The only other solution I can think of would to be to mix it with another beer but since this is a 5 gal brew I'd need a lot of beer. At least I'll have a lot of beer. One can never have too much, right?

 

[flars]

Don't judge your beer to harshly until it is fully bottle conditioned. I would give this one 6 weeks of conditioning time before tasting.

Did you use a recipe calculator for the beer? I've been playing with Brewtoad to tweak some of my standards.
edit.
the beer is about 103 IBUs.
1 ounce of Magnum would have been about 57 IBUs.
With one once magnum the beer would have been in the range of an English IPA. I made quite a few assumptions, like the grains were steeped, not mashed.

 

[Beernik]

2oz of Magnum for 60 minutes is your problem. I calculate your IBU = 103 and an OG = 1.055.

That gives you a BU to GU ratio of 1.87 and an IPA (I assume what you were going for) is typically is around 1.0.

 

[EVILsteve]

13%A.A. for 60 minutes would be way too much for my taste as well. It will dissipate somewhat overtime but its still most likely going to be quite bitter.

Personally I'd either swap the cascade and magnum following the recipe or use use 0.5oz magnum and dry hop the rest to balance it.

Your recipe looks pretty solid otherwise. Im pretty particular about the exact right bittering before much else, If im just experimenting with a recipe I often do two similar 3 gallon batches in a couple 5gal carboys with different amounts or time of bittering then take a sample sometime after high krausen when I want to get rid of that headspace. if I like one or both I can rack them to 3 gal carboys to clear and bottle or mix them together in a 6 gallon to adjust the bitterness. Depends what you have available but keeping mind of your options down the road when your messing around with a new recipe idea or hop variety can save a batch and time when you start tweaking something that's close but just not where you want it.

Pay attention to the initial flavour before the bittering hits and you can get an idea of the flavour profile and adjust accordingly. Its all trial and error till you get the feel for it but that's all part of this hobby. Be proud of it though my first beer was dubbed "the ass beer" and yours is a far cry better than my ass beer.

 

[Homercidal]

I'd cut back on the bittering hops by about half. (off my head without doing the math)

You can wait it out. In a year or two it will probably tone down quite a bit. By then the hop FLAVOR will also be gone though, and an IPA in general doesn't age well. Those hops flavors turn into other flavors that many people don't like.

 

[kombat]

Others have already commented on the bitterness situation, so in the interest of avoiding repetition, I'll abstain from repeating what's already been said.

What caught my eye, however, was this:

Grains
1/4 lb vienna malt
1/4 lb munich malt
1/2 lb row 6 malt (American)

Did you steep these grains, or do the world's tiniest mash? I'm hoping you mashed (they all need to be mashed), but based on the quantities, I suspect you merely steeped them. Can you clarify? This wouldn't affect the bitterness, but it will affect other aspects of the beer. I'm curious what the recipe told you to do with these grains.

 

[Homercidal]

Oh, I just realized I should have recommended the blending method. It would work great in this case as long as standard procedures are used to avoid oxygen when combining. You could simply bottle it using two bottling buckets.

 

[ncc]

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I steeped the grains and I used a recipe from a previous kit as a guideline on how much grains, malt, hops to use.

I wasn't aware of IBU and OG calculators and definitely will use them for my future endeavors.

 

[kombat]

I steeped the grains

I was afraid of that. The malts you listed are all base malts, which means you cannot just steep them. "Steeping" grains have already been kilned such that their starches have been converted to (mostly unfermentable) sugars, so it's sufficient to simply steep them in hot water and "leech" those sugars out into your wort.

Base grains, on the other hand (such as the ones you listed) have not yet been converted to sugars, and only contain starches. So if you steep them, all you'll get out of them is starch, which is not fermentable and will cause your beer to be hazy and taste off. Base grains must be mashed (soaked in a particular volume of water in a very particular temperature range for a period of time) so that the enzymes can convert those starches into fermentable sugars.

It's not a super big deal, it was just a bit of a waste is all, and it will result in a sub-optimal beer. Next time, stick with steeping grains, or do a mini/partial mash with the base grains (but it's not really necessary to include any base grains at all in your recipe if you're relying on extract for your fermentables contribution).

 

[Homercidal]

I was afraid of that. The malts you listed are all base malts, which means you cannot just steep them. "Steeping" grains have already been kilned such that their starches have been converted to (mostly unfermentable) sugars, so it's sufficient to simply steep them in hot water and "leech" those sugars out into your wort.

Base grains, on the other hand (such as the ones you listed) have not yet been converted to sugars, and only contain starches. So if you steep them, all you'll get out of them is starch, which is not fermentable and will cause your beer to be hazy and taste off. Base grains must be mashed (soaked in a particular volume of water in a very particular temperature range for a period of time) so that the enzymes can convert those starches into fermentable sugars.

It's not a super big deal, it was just a bit of a waste is all, and it will result in a sub-optimal beer. Next time, stick with steeping grains, or do a mini/partial mash with the base grains (but it's not really necessary to include any base grains at all in your recipe if you're relying on extract for your fermentables contribution).

+1. Read up on partial mash brewing. It's very easy and it might just show you how easy All Grain brewing can be.

 

[M42]

Even if it's too bitter after the beer is fully conditioned just set it aside and let it age for a few months. Hop bitterness fades with aging.