I have a bitter thumb

[OPKUTech]

I cant seem to avoid making beers that are bitter. Now I like bitter so I'm not complaining but every beer has been more bitter than expected. The last beer I brewed was an all grain honey ale. I even cut the hop bill in half and it ended up tasting like a light version of my Rye ale fully hopped.

Any suggestions where I'm going wrong?

 

[Yooper]

Well, a couple of things come to mind. One is water chemistry. Before we get into that, though, could you post a sample recipe where the beer came out too bitter? Make sure you post the AAUs of the hops so we can see if it's the hops, or the lack of malt, that might be the problem. If the recipe is ok, we'll ask you about water chemistry. What kind of water are you using?

 

[OPKUTech]

8#'s two-row
1.5# honey malt
.5# munich
3 lbs raw wild honey
.5 oz amarillo 60 min
.5 oz cascade 40 min
.5oz amarillo 30 min
.5 oz cascade 20 min

single infusion mash at 150 for an hour. batch sparge. add honey at flameout

I have no idea what the AAU's of the hops are.

 

[Yooper]

Well, without knowing the AAU of the hops, it'd just be a guess as to the bittering you got. But I'll still make a guess that you didn't have nearly enough malt for that many bittering hops. AAUs are hugely important- I have some amarillo hops that are 9.5% and some that are 4.5%. That makes a big difference in the amount of bittering compounds you'll extract.

That recipe is really not very good, so I'd suggest not getting any more recipes from that source. It's all bittering hops, too little base malt, too much honey malt, and too much honey. You only have about 60% base malt there, if my quick math is accurate.

Anyway, using my 9% AAU amarillos as a guide, I figure that you have IBUs of about over 50. That's not too much in a beer with an OG of 1.070ish like that recipe would provide, but you have NO flavor or aroma hops beyond that 20 minute addition, so you have plenty of bitterness but no hops added to balance it at all. Mashing at 150 and adding 3# of honey makes it even worse- a thin, dry, bitter mess of a beer.

I'm certain that in this case it's a bad recipe. The recipe is really terrible.

 

[ChshreCat]

+1 to what yooper said. Those 30 and 40 minute additions are pretty much all bitterness. Maybe a little flavor would be left from the 30, but it's mostly bitterness you're getting from that one too. Some flavor from the 20 and no aroma hops at all.

Like she said. It ain't you. You're brewin' the recipe right, you're just not brewin' the right recipe.

I'd argue about it being too much honey malt, though. But I really like honey malt.

 

[OPKUTech]

Thanks for the advice.