IBU and "Apparent bitterness" too high

[dphornguy]

So I checked and didn't find a thread. You can point me there if this is redundant:

I decided to move from kit brewing to homemade recipes and all grain to boot. I bought the book Beer Craft by Bill Botswick and decided to take a crack at his recipe in the back. I started with a Pale Ale. While waiting these weeks for fermenting, I have been creating my own calculators in excel to help me next time understand the profile of the brew (i.e. IBU, OG,FG, IBU/OG, etc). I have determined that the IBU (following his recipe) was off the charts high. Now normally this might have been ok if there was a large amount of sugar (high OG) to balance it, but this was not an imperial recipe, just a pale ale. The Apparent Bitterness (IBU/OG) was like double what most beers are reccommended to be.

So bottling day came and sure enough when I did a little taste test, the beer was beyond bitter. I have had enough experience to know that the taste will change over time, but has anyone ever heard of something just being too overhopped (for bittering)? I am just wondering how much should I even bother to keep knowing that given the little amount of initial sugar it will probably never balance out.


Side note, has anyone ever looked at this book's recipes? Am I the only one who thinks they are overhopped (For bittering)? (i.e. >100 IBU for 1.05OG beer)

 

[dphornguy]

So I was thinking...what if I jsut reopened the batch and added some corn sugar (or other sugar) to get things rolling again? It will probably mean that the ABV will shoot up high, but I used a California Ale yeast, so I think it should tolerate the higher content. Worst case it leaves some residual sugar (thoughts)?

 

[BackAlley]

I would think about brewing another batch of wort but with little to no bitterness and then blending the two. Then I'd dry hop them big time so that the aroma matches the bitterness.

 

[dphornguy]

That is kind of similar to my suggestion, except you are solving the ABV issue by increasing the amount of water used. Since this was a 2 gallon batch, I could just do that and fill to 4-5 gallons. Thanks.

 

[pdxal]

No, adding another batch of wort would be adding malt flavor too, more than corn sugar and water would add. This would balance out the bitterness/hopping. The corn sugar (or cane sugar, which would be cheaper and give you the same result) would up the ABV but probably leave a drier beer and even less balance to the bitterness.
Also, it is impossible to have >100 IBUs in a beer without adding hop extracts, if even that would do it. You might try one of the online calculators to see if he is hopping a high gravity wort then diluting it, which would have a much lower bitterness than some would expect.

 

[acidrain]

What were the hop additions for this 2 gallon beer?
Diluting with a non-hopped beer would be the way to go.

 

[dphornguy]

Umm without going back to double check, I think it was 1.33oz cascade and .25oz citra at 60minutes, .33oz cascade and .25 oz citra at 20 and .5 citra and .33 cascade at end of boil.

My remedy batch was 2.5 gallons and 5# dme light. With .5oz citra at very end of boil for aroma.

 

[chri5]

Umm without going back to double check, I think it was 1.33oz cascade and .25oz citra at 60minutes, .33oz cascade and .25 oz citra at 20 and .5 citra and .33 cascade at end of boil.

My remedy batch was 2.5 gallons and 5# dme light. With .5oz citra at very end of boil for aroma.

That looks like a lot of hops for that recipe. I think your fix should work.

I'd highly recommend a program like beersmith. It is much easier than setting it up in excel, and that's coming from someone who uses excel pretty much all the time.

 

[dphornguy]

The citra at 60 minutes is what really did in the brew. I ran the calculations and now it seems to be targeting around a 5.75-6.25 ABV (depending on error) with a OG of 1.056 and IBU of 64. That should still be pretty hoppy, but not intolerable. I also wanted to keep the ABV from taking off.

The real error will be in the fact that the hops utilization really doesn't take into account that the hops were added to a brew that was of a different OG than the final mixed up batch. We will see what comes of that.

Checked yesterday and the new batch is going crazy. Hopefully 3-4 weeks should allow a decent mash up.


Yeah I looked at BS. I am forever a cheapskate who hates paying for things if I can. I would like to store more than the max 12 recipes or whatever they allow for free. Making my own excel Macro was more about understanding the logic behind the different values. I will probably consider BS if I feel my method is too shaky, but to be honest tuning in my excel macros is half of the fun of it.

Right now, I am seeing the benefit of just being able to understand the parameters that going into defining the brew. All I knew until a few weeks ago was HBU and now I am seeing there is a whole level of more complexity that goes beyond that. I wish I would have learned more of this before diving into this flawed recipe.

 

[beerrata]

I own this book as well. Love the design and have the scottish ale, saison and wheat recipes in the bottle carbonating.
I have the same complaint as you, I put the pale ale recipe into https://brewgr.com/homebrew-recipe-calculator and the IBU's were off the charts. I think the grain bill is ok but hops are way off. The stout recipe is off the charts on IBU as well, it calls for 20 g of Target at 60 min.
What I have done is take the recipes and put them into the link above or any recipe calculator and adjust the hops from there.

 

[dphornguy]

Just and Update:

I just bottled my remedy yesterday. Overall the color was a bit more cloudy than the original (as a result of the DME brew I made), but not terrible. Just like a cold glass would look. The taste even at this point was pretty good considering where it started. Tastes are upfront fruity and sweet and finishing clean. ABV came out to be ~5.6%.

Overall my predication that the actual bitterness will be less than predicted value was correct. MAking a sugar brew and an overhopped brew and mixing together, resulted in hop utilization being lower than the calculations. For something that should have been a dry brew, this is really sweet. In the future I would probably lower the target OG, total amount of hops and aim for what I originally wanted rather that where this fix landed.

All that being said, this was a great experience for me to learn that you can take a brew that is misbalanced (even after you bottle it) and remash for a whole new brew. It is probably impossible to correct a brew compeltely to get exactly what you want, but home brew can definitely be "recommishioned". So in the end, no matter how bad you screw up (outside of contamination), it ain't over til its over.

My final comment: If you buy that book (due to its relative cheapness and availability electronically), just forget the recipes. The guy who wrote it obviously either never made a brew in his life, or never made one at the volume he suggested (as he screwed up the recipe conversion beyond recognition).