DIPA has a sweet note

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I'm part way through drinking a recent batch, made like so:
4.5kg pale (67%)
1.2kg vienna (18%)
0.3kg carapils (4.5%)
0.3kg medium crystal (4.5%)
0.4kg white sugar (6%)

25g Columbus @ 60 mins (50 IBUs)
25g Galaxy @ 20 mins (28 IBUs)
75g Galaxy @ 5 mins (28 IBUs)
50g Galaxy hopstand, 30 mins (4 IBUs)
50g Nelson Sauvin hopstand 30 mins (4 IBUs)
50g Galaxy dry hop 5 days
50g Nelson Sauvin dry hop 5 days

Mashed @ 66C

Fermented with US05

BU/GU ratio 1.62

OG 1075, FG 1014

It has a big malt backbone with a sweet note up front then the bitterness hit - pretty good but not balanced I would say. It's sweet then bitter. I'd prefer to eliminate the sweet note while keeping the rest.

My recent batch I've gone for a lower gravity (targeting 6% instead of 8%), reduced the Vienna to 10% and removed the carapils, as I assumed the Vienna was a contributing factor, but reading some other threads, folks routinely have 20%+ Vienna, so maybe not. Maybe just the overall crystal/carapils % was too high.

Any helpful thoughts?

 

[doomy86]

Yeah the sweetness probably comes from the caramalt. I brewed beers with over 50% Vienna and there was no sweetness at all.

 

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An update - I've done another three brews since this. The subsequent one definitely didn't have the sweet note, but it was 5% medium crystal (85% pale, 10% vienna), so not that surprising.

Also, my father in law thought the previous one was grrrreat so may just be my palate for any sweetness is very limited. Give me bitterness rarrrrr.

A side note though, my efficiency is 63%, so I scale up recipes. I see there are two trains of thought on this - some say only increase base malt, some say scale up everything.

I'm skeptical of the latter based my experience - as noted, it could my palate but I think scaling up the caramel malts proportionally leaves things out of balance. I'd be interested in any science behind this (rather than anecdotes) - both ideas are plausible.