Help! My AG Beer Tastes like Hop Water

[slim2043]

I just finished up a batch of beer BIAB my own recipe. This was my 2nd AG batch and first recipe I developed. On brew day I couldn't get 1lb of grain I wanted (8oz carapils 8oz 20L) but didn't think much of it since I haven't brewed since winter. Recipe is 11lbs 2-row 1lb 80L. Mash @ 152 60 mins. Boil 60 mins w a bunch of hop additions totaling 6 oz hops. This was meant to be a simple American IPA. Due to the use of whole hops I lost over 2 gallons for fermentation and topped off w boiled and cooled water. Just tasted a fully carbed beer after two weeks in a bottle and it tastes like hop flavored water. It smells like pure booze. I'm The OG was 1.050 and in one week was 1.008. I used BRY-97. Not sure if it was the mash temp the hop absorption the grain bill or the combo of the three but the beer is not what I was looking for an Im very disappointed. I tasted a glass w a small bit of table sugar added and it was much better. Unfortunately these are all bottles so no hopes of improving other than the improvement that may come form a couple weeks in the bottle. Any tips?

 

[brettg20]

Did you take the gravity before or after adding 2 gallons of water?

 

[slim2043]

The gravity was taken prior to adding the water

 

[Darwin18]

You diluted the wort by adding 2 gallons of water to it at the end of the boil. That would certainly explain why your beer tastes thin and bland. When using whole leaf hops, I try to make a larger batch than I would if I were only using pellet hops. For example, for a typical 5 gallon batch, I would scale it up to 6 or 7 gallons to account for absorption and trub.

 

[nucciocioccio]

Two weeks only from bottling, that's the matter. Wait, flavours will meld, hop will become less aggressive, and overall result will be way better than they are now

 

[dstranger99]

You diluted the wort by adding 2 gallons of water to it at the end of the boil. That would certainly explain why your beer tastes thin and bland. When using whole leaf hops, I try to make a larger batch than I would if I were only using pellet hops. For example, for a typical 5 gallon batch, I would scale it up to 6 or 7 gallons to account for absorption and trub.

Bingo!!!!! Thread Winner...........

 

[slim2043]

I was pretty sure my lack of sugars to start wasnt the key piece but the qty of water that dilluted the recipe was the key factor here.
I just looked through my notes and realized there was more than one eff up that brew day. I collected too much water in the mash (8 gallons where I did 6 last batch)which I think caused the water to evaporate faster in the boil??? Any credit to that theory? Then the hops absorbing the water and then adding the water at the end further diluting the solution... Just a real eff up on my part not paying enough attention to detail... Hopefully some flavors will come out in a few weeks so the beer will be drinkable otherwise I will be left to consume them all myself w a spoonful of sugar and lament in my stupidity so that it never happens again.
Thx for feedback mates!

 

[BrewWorm]

You diluted the wort by adding 2 gallons of water to it at the end of the boil. That would certainly explain why your beer tastes thin and bland. When using whole leaf hops, I try to make a larger batch than I would if I were only using pellet hops. For example, for a typical 5 gallon batch, I would scale it up to 6 or 7 gallons to account for absorption and trub.

Yep, this is correct.

Alternatively, you could have thrown in enough DME to those two gallons to make it 1.050 if you didn't make it bigger to begin with. Or just accepted you were going to have a smaller batch. You can expect to pour water in and have the gravity stay the same.

 

[nucciocioccio]

Post boil dilution with water may have effect on IBUs, on alcoholic content, but not on "sugar" taste or flavour; as I understand your og was 1.050 after diluting the wort, so there's still plenty of sugar in there. If the beer is watery it is a mash question, and the fact that it went down to 1.008 seems to confirm that your mash made too much unfermentable sugars.
Obviously is important to know what you were aiming for, if the original plan was an OG of 1.080, needing a thin body, obviously an og of 1.050 could bring a watery feeling, but even in this case not so much to consider it hopped water. It still is a 5,8% ABV beer.
I say, let it rest for another month, it will be completely different.

 

[Darwin18]

Nucciocioccio:

The gravity was taken prior to adding the water

The OG of the wort going into the fermentor was probably much, much lower than the 1.050 measurement of the 3 gallons of undiluted wort.

 

[chickypad]

Nucciocioccio:The OG of the wort going into the fermentor was probably much, much lower than the 1.050 measurement of the 3 gallons of undiluted wort.

Exactly - like 1.030 range if you top 3 galllon up to 5 gallon, so it's coming in about 2.89%. Combined with a relatively small percentage of specialty malts and low mash temp, yeah that's gonna be kinda watery.

 

[slim2043]

Thanks for the feedback. The target OG was 1.058 and target finishing was 1.014 I believe when I wrote the recipe. I have had to add water to previous batches albeit batches of extract brew and I have had to add 2-3 gallons a couple of times. Those batches still came out great. I am still struggling with finding the proper amounts of water from batch to batch. I think that is something I need to put some more focus into especially when it comes to the mash qty and boil qty so I can hit pretty close to 5-6 gallons when I'm done and hit closer to my target gravities and ibus etc.

I should also mention that the beer I sampled was pulled straight from the primary when I was racking to secondary for dry hop addition. I had more than 5 gallons come out of the primary so I filled a few bottles up and carbed them with sugar tabs while the rest of the beer sat in the secondary for two weeks. So the beer I sampled was 24 days since brew day old. The final product won't be sampled for another two weeks so I will hold out some hope for it and give it some more time after that if needed. If it still sucks, at least I know where my mistakes were made when I brew it again.

 

[nucciocioccio]

Nucciocioccio:



The OG of the wort going into the fermentor was probably much, much lower than the 1.050 measurement of the 3 gallons of undiluted wort.

Ooops... Yeah, that's hopped water.
Use DME with topping water next time if you don't want to do a smaller beer, maybe it won't be the best beer in the world, but still good.

 

[Darwin18]

Are you using any kind of software to calculate mash/sparge temperature and volumes? I found Beersmith to be an invaluable tool once I correctly created my equipment profile. I don't do BIAB though, and the old version of Beersmith that I own doesn't have BIAB setup. Software can be very helpful to taking the guess work out of volumes/temperatures but it's not 100% perfect either.

 

[BlackJaqueJanaviac]

So for those of us who might run into this problem in the future what is the solution?
Just brew a 3 gallon batch and go with it?
Crush more grain and do another mash to make 2 gallons of wort? Could this be done the next day and just added to the fermenter?

 

[chickypad]

Water volumes take a little dialing in but if you take good notes you should be able to do that within a few batches. Regarding the earlier question, your boil off rate for your kettle is not dependent on the starting volume, only the surface area which is the same whether there are 6 or 8 gallons in the kettle. Of course there are other factors like atmospheric pressure, humidity, but if you keep the same roiling boil each time that is something you can measure that should be fairly reproducible.

Then you just need to estimate your other kettle losses. When calculating recipe OG I just add that estimated amount to the batch size in Beersmith and am able to hit my numbers pretty much every time. For example on a 10 gallon batch of IPA I would calculate for 12 gallon batch size, knowing I will lose about 2 gallons of wort to hops/trub on my system. For the same size Belgian pale with a lot less hops I would set the batch size at 11 or 11.25 gallon (and by batch size I mean post boil volume).

 

[BrewWorm]

So for those of us who might run into this problem in the future what is the solution?
Just brew a 3 gallon batch and go with it?
Crush more grain and do another mash to make 2 gallons of wort? Could this be done the next day and just added to the fermenter?

Just live with the smaller batch or have some DME of simliar style to mix into the additional H20.

This is really about planning, and knowing your system. Your boil off is dependant mainly on the geometry of your brew kettle, and the water trapped by hop additions is going to about the volumeH20/volumeHOP ratio so you just need to plan how much sugar you want in your post-boil volume, plan your mash based on this, and then you need to decide how much water you need to use pre-boil to hit your final post-boil target. I usually end up with ~2 gallon boil off in 60min and use pellets. I've noticed boil off is not really dependant on the volume of the boil... I'll get 2 gallon boil off for 5 or 10 gallon batches.