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Hydrometer Sample is BITTER

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naughtyco

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I probably already know the answer to this but I'm just calming ny nerves.

I doubled the amount of hops the recipe called for for the Tru Brew IPA. I chose Centenial for the boil and Cascade for the finishing.

I sampled the hydrometer reading (1.020) and, of course, its very bitter. I love bitter IPA's but this might be over the top.

My friend said it will mellow out once I prime it and it sits in the bottle for a few days but I just don't want this whole thing to be ruined.

Question is: Do you think it will mellow out?

I know I shouldn't have added extra hops but I was just excited and wanted to make a hop-bomb my first try.
 
It will mellow out a bit (5-6 months), but you'll lose the hop flavor and aroma first. You'll end up with a high-end ESB.
 
Would racking it diminish some of the bitterness?

No....You doubled the hops so guess what? You got double the bitterness. It'll probably take months to come down. But what the heck. You made it...you'll drink it. Hell, it might end up being the best brew you ever made.:cross:
 
The thing to remember though is that if you are smelling or tasting this during fermentation not to worry. During fermentation all manner of stinky stuff is given off (ask lager brewers about rotten egg/sulphur smells, or Apfelwein makers about "rhino farts,") like we often say, fermentation is often ugly AND stinky and PERFECTLY NORMAL.

It's really only down the line, AFTER the beer has been fermented (and often after it has bottle conditioned even,) that you concern yourself with any flavor issues if they are still there.

I think too many new brewers focus to much on this stuff too early in the beer's journey. And they panic unnecessarily.

A lot of the stuff you smell/taste initially more than likely ends up disappearing either during a long primary/primary & secondary combo, Diacetyl rests and even during bottle conditioning.

If I find a flavor/smell, I usually wait til it's been in the bottle 6 weeks before I try to "diagnose" what went wrong, that way I am sure the beer has passed any window of greenness.

Fementation is often ugly, smelly and crappy tasting in the beginning and perfectly normal. The various conditioning phases, be it long primary, secondarying, D-rests, bottle conditioning, AND LAGERING, are all part of the process where the yeast, and co2 correct a lot of the normal production of the byproducts of fermentation.

Lagering is a prime example of this. Lager yeast are prone to the production of a lot of byproducts, the most familiar one is sulphur compounds (rhino farts) but in the dark cold of the lagering process, which is at the minimum of a month (I think many homebrewers don't lager long enough) the yeast slowly consumes all those compounds which results in extremely clean tasting beers if done skillfully.

Ales have their own version of this, but it's all the same.

If you are sampling your beer before you have passed a 'window of greeness" which my experience is about 3-6 weeks in the bottle, then you are more than likely just experiencing an "off flavor" due to the presence of those byproducts (that's what we mean when we say the beer is "green" it's still young and unconditioned.) but once the process is done, over 90% of the time the flavors/smells are gone.

Of the remaining 10%, half of those may still be salvageable through the long time storage that I mention in the Never dump your beer!!! Patience IS a virtue!!! Time heals all things, even beer:

And the remaining 50% of the last 10% are where these tables and lists come into play. To understand what you did wrong, so you can avoid it in the future.

Long story short....I betcha that smell/flavor will be long gone when the beer is carbed and conditioned.

In other words, relax, your beer will be just fine, like 99.5%. And if it si too biter AFTER it has carbed and conditioned for a few weeks, it WILL mellow with time.
 
Tasting it in the fermenter is hardly close to tasting it in a bottle after a couple months.
I always take a taste but it never ever compares to when its actually finished. Bottle it, let it sit, it'll mellow out. I've had some funky beers taste pretty good after they sit in the closet for a couple months.
 
You never know whta it really will taste like till the beer is bottled and conditioned. I have had bitter samples that ended up tasting low in in bitterness and other samples that seemed less bitter but final product was very bitter.
 
And what do you know...

3 days after I posted this, I took a hydrometer reading, (still 1.020) and tasted it.

Bitterness COMPLETELY mellowed down. I'd like the taste to be more pronounced but it smells tangy and fruity, a nice standard IPA. The bite at the end is just a little kick in the throat, not a knife slicing down your esophagus.

HEED THE WORDS: JUST BE PATIENT!
 

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