Troegs Hopback amber ale debacle

[cwheel]

I royally screwed up an all grain brew last weekend, and wondered if anyone has ever added boiled wort to a 5 gallon batch a week after pitching.

I used the following 5 lb general recipe:

10.5 lbs Americal Pilsner
2.5 lbs Munich
0.25 lb Crystal 20L
0.1 lb Chocolate

1 oz nugget at 60 mins
Mixed 0.5 oz Cascade and 0.5 oz Willamette, and added 1/3rd of the mix at 30 mins, 1/3rd at 20, and 1/3rd at 10 mins.

I then put 1 oz Nugget pellets and 1 oz Mt Hood pellets into a custom hopback that I built. Picture below. However, I quickly realized that pellets clog the hell out of a hopback, and so ended up stupidly adding the 2 ozs to the beer right before draining it to the fermenter (post cooling). This means I had 4 oz of hops in a beer that really shouldn't have anywhere near that.

Anyway, according to the BYO recipe and my beer calc, I should have been at 1.063 OG as I dumped into the fermenter. I was way low at 1.053. Furthermore, the Wyest 1056 finished fermenting after less than 48 hours, partly because I fermented high (74 degrees). It finished at 1.010, which also seems low.

It is EXTREMELY bitter, and I also sparged too hot (dumped 182 degree water directly into the grain bed, which I believe is just too hot). So I probably also might have some tannin extraction.

The color is pathetic - it is not anywhere near the color of the true Troegs beer. It looks like cloudy dog urine and tastes like poop. I almost think that the LHBS might have mixed up the grain, because all of my other AG brews have been pretty close to the intended cloned beer.

I know the mantra is to relax and give it time, but I feel like I am pretty good at recognizing when a beer is going to turn out good, and when it won't get to where I want it to be regardless of time.

With that in mind, I was considering mashing up some 2-row and crystal 60L so that I could get about 1.5 gallons pre-boil and maybe 1.0 gallon post-boil, and add it to my 6.5 gallon carboy. Is this advisable or not?

Thanks for any help! It actually hurts my teeth to drink it right now, even though its only been about a week in primary.

 

[sonex]

at this point I would just leave it alone. Hop flavor and bitterness will fade over time. I have brewed some damn good beer b/c of mistakes, its kind of funny how non intended mistakes can produce good beer ( it my be different than intended but my still turn out good). The 82f water would probably been about 168f in the mash tun which is good temp for a mash out so that should be no problem.

 

[cwheel]

Thanks for the reply! Can you clarify something for me? Is it possible to leach tannins out of the grain if 182 degree water is in contact with a specific portion of the grain bed prior to you mixing it up?

Because you're right, when I mixed everything up, the temp never rose above 170 degrees, but parts of the bed were greater than that for a very brief moment (30 seconds max?)

Maybe you're right, maybe I should just put it somewhere I can't see it, and come back to it in a few weeks and re-evaluate whether to bottle or mess with it more.

 

[Palefire]

Just give it time. The hop bitterness will work itself out.

Sparging process sounds just right, actually. You want your grain bed to be about 168 (give or take a few degrees), which means that the water itself has to be hotter than that. 185 is a good rule of thumb here, so 182 should be fine. The 30 seconds of temperature equalization won't hurt anything.

Post here in 6-8 weeks and let us know how it comes out!

 

[tieflyer]

sweet hopback! diy plans here?

[/QUOTE]

 

[erikhild59]

Patience grasshoppa! I think it'll be great.

 

[bourgeoisbee]

A week is about the tail end of when you want to add more fermentables, so you can add more wort if you want. I've only majorly screwed up one batch of beer, which was probably my 8th batch or so when I starting to explore beyond kits, but didn't have the knowledge basis I have now and I incorrectly substituted my bittering hops and got a beer that was undrinkably bitter at 2 weeks after bottling. I just let it sit and in 3 months it was great. That beer was an amber, so it had some roasted malts to help mask the bitterness overtime. Because you put so many flavor and especially aroma hops I'd just let it age a bit and try it a month after bottling/kegging and assess from there. The yeast are still cleaning up after themselves at this point, so hopefully it should clear up and lose many of those off flavors.

 

[badhabit]

just give it time. The hop bitterness will work itself out.

Sparging process sounds just right, actually. You want your grain bed to be about 168 (give or take a few degrees), which means that the water itself has to be hotter than that. 185 is a good rule of thumb here, so 182 should be fine. The 30 seconds of temperature equalization won't hurt anything.

Post here in 6-8 weeks and let us know how it comes out!

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