IPA/Brown ale hybrid

[Stecco]

ok, i just racked down to secondary and i want some wisdom from experienced brewers...

the brew wasnt overly hoppy, BUT there wasnt enough sweetness to make it a solid brown ale. The recipe seemed to have enough sweet/nutty malt and i added some turbinado sugar. Is there anything i should do or will it change after bottling? Im planning on letting it sit in secondary for about 2 weeks before i bottle.

I'm really aiming for a balanced beer. Maybe hops up front with a sweet finish.

 

[Calder]

Messing with it now is liable to screw it up completely. Take what you have, research and try and understand what you could have done different to get what you were looking for and apply that knowledge/wisdom next time you brew a similar batch.

The addition of the sugar would have only resulted in a thinner, less sweet beer. The sugar will completely ferment out, resulting in a higher alcohol, without any additional malt body to offset it.

 

[unionrdr]

If you want a malty sweetness in your beer,then either use lower attenuating yeast,or add some maltodextrin to the mix. It's a long chain sugar that doesn't ferment out. Just make sure you use enough hops to balance it. You can even add more malt (DME/LME) & get enough "un-fermentables" to give the same effect by controlling how much late hops you add. And you're more likely to get the malty flavor up front,with the hops coming on right after that. Pretty hard to get the hops 1st & malt second.

 

[Stecco]

i definitely plan on adding more DME next time, but can i expect any improvement for this batch after 2 weeks in secondary and 4 weeks in bottles? im thinking the malt will show a little more if the hops pull back juuuuust a little.

so far, its definitely a nice beer. i was just hoping for amazing lol

 

[unionrdr]

I think 4 weeks in the bottle does allow it to balance out a bit better. The flavors develop more.