Lack of hoppiness

[Estebandido]

I brewed up an IPA according to Papazian's recipe... and using Cascade hops I grew and harvested myself (the plant is now 3 years old and ginormous). However, upon drinking it, there's essentially no hops flavor at all. It has a sweet taste, and an even sweeter aftertaste.

The only way I diverged from the recipe was to use 8 lbs. of malt extract, as opposed to the 6.6 called for in the book. But I can't imagine that overpowering the hops entirely. Other than that, I followed the recipe closely, adding the right amount of hops at the right time. The hops themselves looked decent, in my opinion.

Is there anything else I may have done wrong?

 

[rjsnau]

There are two things that come to mind for me although I am not and expert on this. Maybe someone can correct me if I am wrong. The first thing is I remember reading somewhere that the bitterness of homegrown hops can vary a lot so they should not be relied on for bittering additions but more for aroma. The second is that you did add about 30% more malt then the recipe called for. If you didn't balance at with more hops than the recipe called for you would not have the correct hop ratio and would affect the sweetness. You may have a combination of both issues here.

 

[FromZwolle]

I brewed up an IPA according to Papazian's recipe... and using Cascade hops I grew and harvested myself (the plant is now 3 years old and ginormous). However, upon drinking it, there's essentially no hops flavor at all. It has a sweet taste, and an even sweeter aftertaste.

The only way I diverged from the recipe was to use 8 lbs. of malt extract, as opposed to the 6.6 called for in the book. But I can't imagine that overpowering the hops entirely. Other than that, I followed the recipe closely, adding the right amount of hops at the right time. The hops themselves looked decent, in my opinion.

Is there anything else I may have done wrong?

wet or dried homegrown hops?

 

[Estebandido]

Dried. I've read up on wet-hopping, and it appears to be an Advanced Topic. At this point, I'm struggling with the simple stuff.

In my own quasi-defense, I will say that the bottles that have aged several more weeks are merely bad, and not actually awful.