F'd up Brew Day (Can I say that in the title?)

[TAK]

I F'd up my brew today. Total noob move. I mindlessly punched the numbers into the IBU calculator and completely missed. I THOUGHT I was making an IPA with a TON of Fuggles & Willamette. I did a progressive hop thing (1/4 oz each at 60 min, 45, 30, 20, 17, 14, 11, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1, and Flame Out). Plugged the numbers into the calc and got 85 IBUs even with the low AA hops. Recalculated after my brew to adjust for the actual OG and found that the first time I calculated this I switched my boil volume and my final volume. Totally over estimated my IBUs. The beer is actually only 26 IBU and 1.090 OG.

 

[RobertRGeorge]

Well, three ounces of hops in the brew may not get you an IPA but you may have a nice barley wine there. You could try making a hop tea with a couple ounces of additional hops in a couple pints of boiled water and add that to the brew when you rack to a secondary fermenter. Dry hopping should also add some additional hoppy character, maybe one or two ounces.

 

[TAK]

It was actually 6 oz of hops. 1/4 oz each, so 1/2 oz total at each of the iterations. What I'm afraid of is that I'll have a ton of hop character with no respectable bitterness to back it up. I was considering labeling it an "Imperial Ordinary Bitter." I do plan on dry hopping with 1oz of Willamette.

 

[TAK]

Actually, the more I think about it, maybe I could get the bitterness I need by doing the "hop tea." But some of this involves theory that I'm not too familiar with. I'm not sure how to calculate the bitterness that a small boil would impart after it's added to the main batch. Let's say I boil a half gallon with some high AA hops and add that into the main batch. I'd even be happy to introduce some more fermentables. Plenty will say that you need some gravity to the boil to properly utilize the hops. So let’s say I add DME to the half gallon to bring it to a gravity of 1.037, the same that I use for starters. Let’s also assume for simplicity that there's no boil-off. If I calculate the bitterness for the 1/2 gallon, is the effect additive when diluted? That is to say, can I calculate the bitterness for the half gallon and divide by the total volume to get the final effect?

Plug this into http://www.brewersfriend.com/ibu-calculator/ to follow along. If I boil 1 oz of 10 AA hops for 60 min in a 1/2 gallon boil, where the final volume is also 1/2 gallon, then I get 427.19 IBU. So, if I add that to 5 gallons, the total volume is 5.5 gal. Is the final effect 77.67 IBUs (427.19 IBU/5.5 gal)?

 

[RobertRGeorge]

His royal highness Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head is a proponent of hop tea. He says just boil the hops in enough water to extract what you want, no need for extra malt. My own preference would be to not overthink this. After all you've effed it up already, right ;-)

I'd make some hop tea, draw out a measured sample, add a measured amount of the tea, taste it, repeat as necessary to get the bitterness you like, add the appropriate amount of tea to the main batch, make an offering to Ninkasi, and go with it.