Hop Help

[DJBrewer]

Ok, so I brewed a brown ale about a month ago and it was so great that I just brewed another batch...but, I made one mistake. I was supposed to add the bittering hops 5 minutes into the boil and then the flavoring hops 40 minutes later, continue the boil for 10 more minutes before turning the heat off and adding finishing hops for aroma.

I mixed the bittering and flavoring hop packets up and added the flavoring first and realized the mistake about 10 mins into the boil, so I figured the best thing to do was to get back on track the best I could, so I went ahead and added the bittering hops.

Today I planned to move things over to the second fermentor, so I measured the S.G. and it was right on. I tasted the wort and it's not bad, but nothing like the first batch. It's very hoppy tasting and a little bitter...my question is, is there anything I can or should do before or when I move it to the second...other than making sure I'm adding the right hops at the right time?

Thanks in advance...DJ

 

[Bierliebhaber]

Yeah, sounds like you were fortunate. Some bittering hops added for flavor might have ruined the beer for you (don't know what you had). If it tastes fine, sounds like your good to go. That's really the prime factor here--do you like it. The hoppy/bitterness will mellow as it clears and conditions. From your post, I couldn't tell whether you are planning on dry hopping ("right hops at the right time").

 

[DJBrewer]

Thanks for the response, it tastes okay, but not what I expected. It was suposed to be a clone of St. Arnold's Brown Ale (called St. Almost Brown Ale), a texas craft beer from here in Houston, ..I guess I really won't know until it's all said and done, not much I can do now, but chalk it up to experience, pay more attention and enjoy the final "fruits of my labor".


Thanks again,
DJ

 

[Rocky71]

You could age it to chill out the bitterness but it should be fine. You could always dry hop it and maybe turn it into a hoppy brown or add in some lemon peel to give it another aspect etc. Endless options really but I'd just leave it alone. : ) should still be awesome. You may even find you like it this way.

 

[billl]

Not much you can do except drink it at this point.

Your beer is more bitter because you added extra hops at the beginning of the boil. The hop doesn't know if it is "bittering" or "aroma". That is just what we call them based on when we use them. If you put them in early, they are bittering. ie they make the beer more bitter. If you put them in at the end, the are aroma. ie you haven't boiled the heck out of them, so you can still taste and smell them.

All your hops should be label with an AA%. That tells you how bitter they will make the beer. eg if you have one with 6% AA and one with 12% AA, the 12% will make the beer twice as bitter. Also, adding two ounce of 6% AA hops are the same as one 12% AA or a 4% and 8% etc. (anything that adds up to 12%)

So, lets say you had 8% AA hops for your bittering and a 4% AA hops for your aroma. You added the of 12% AA hops, which is 50% more bitter than the 8% you planned on. In the future, you can use this math to fix that type of mistake. In this example, if you added the 4% and wanted to get to a total of 8%, you could have added 1/2 ounce of the 8% to get 4% + 1/2*8% = 4%+4% = 8%. You would still have the issue of not having your aroma hops to add at the end, but you would have a beer that was a lot more similar to the original recipe.

 

[DJBrewer]

Thanks for the help, encouragement and additional learning options...I left it alone, moved it to the second fermentor and in a few more weeks I'll bottle it up and then enjoy my "Private Reserve" Special Brown Ale!