Very Bitter Home Brew??

[natelindner]

On multiple occasions I've tried a friend's homebrew and found it very very bitter. I assumed they had just done their hop schedules wrong and bittered their beer way too much, but a few weeks ago I brewed my first beer, an Amber Ale with predicted IBU's of 29, and my suitemate brewed his first beer, an American Wheat with IBU of 19. We were both very careful with our calculations and additions and when we tried our green beer before carbonation both had this same intense and long lasting bitterness. Is it possible they taste so bitter because they arent carbonated and that carbonation seems to take the edge off of the bitterness? Is there something all of us as novice home brewers are doing wrong? Or is home brew just generally more bitter than store bought beers?

 

[Chuu]

If by store bought beers you mean BMC. Then yes, their IBUs are on the bottom of the scale. 29 IBUs in an Amber Ale is on the verge of tasting bitter (I am an IPA drinker who frequently drinks beers of 90+ IBUs so I am a little biased). How experienced are you to the craft beer scene? 29 IBUs is in the range of most Pale Ales and such and definitely should not taste overly bitter.

Edit: and as far as carbonation goes, if anything the effervescence sharpens some of the bitterness in a beer.

 

[JLem]

What were your recipes and processes?

Homebrew is not intrinsically more bitter than any other beer, so it must be something in your recipe or process (or palate?...what non-homebrew beers do you normally drink?)

 

[PIGMAN]

What type of commercial beers are you used to drinking? The homebrews that you tried may have a more bitter character by design.

 

[kaconga]

Perceived bitterness only loosely correlates to IBUs. If the beer tastes more bitter than the style would suggest then I would recommend looking at your water ions for sulfate and checking your process for tannin extraction. Both of those can mess with the perceived bitterness of a beer.

 

[WoodlandBrew]

Bitterness will mellow with time as well. When it is ready to drink it will be more subtle.

 

[peanasky]

Perceived bitterness only loosely correlates to IBUs. If the beer tastes more bitter than the style would suggest then I would recommend looking at your water ions for sulfate and checking your process for tannin extraction. Both of those can mess with the perceived bitterness of a beer.

+1 on this. Your water chemistry can play a bigger role than you'd think.

But as others have said, make sure your expectations are where they should be

 

[cheezydemon3]

Bitterness will mellow with time as well. When it is ready to drink it will be more subtle.

I disagree. He is saying that uncarbed it tastes bitter. Carbed will be much more bitter.

I am leaning towards the BMC comparison. If Bud and guinness are all you have had, SNPA will taste like pure carbonated grapefruit juice. BITTER.

Homebrew, especially partial boil , will, if anything, be less bitter than a full boil of the same recipe.

 

[natelindner]

While I'm no expert on the craft brew scene I am not, nor ever have been, a BMC guy. IPA's are actually my favorite style of beer (I am a big fan of hop flavor). My thought would actually be tannin extraction. I hadn't thought about that but I did have a pretty iffy apparatus for mashing (no buoyant thermometer, only a meat thermometer and also a cruddy electric stove) so at some point I think I raised the temperature a bit too high. Who knows. We'll see how it turns out.

 

[TyTanium]

Can you describe the bitterness? Is is an astringent, almost mouth-drying sensation on the sides & back of your tongue? That's tannins/polyphenols and may be associated with water chemistry...if you didn't acidify your mash/sparge...especially with high-alkaline water. I've also gotten it with a ton of hop material that I squeezed out too hard from a hop bag.

If if's just IBU hop bitterness, the mouthfeel is different. It can still bite, but it's much more pleasant, if that makes any sense.

 

[Chuu]

While I'm no expert on the craft brew scene I am not, nor ever have been, a BMC guy. IPA's are actually my favorite style of beer (I am a big fan of hop flavor). My thought would actually be tannin extraction. I hadn't thought about that but I did have a pretty iffy apparatus for mashing (no buoyant thermometer, only a meat thermometer and also a cruddy electric stove) so at some point I think I raised the temperature a bit too high. Who knows. We'll see how it turns out.

Yea if you like IPAs and you thought it was bitter, there is definitely a process issue. Is the taste astringently bitter? Almost mouth drying/puckering? Then it would be from tannin extraction. Also if it was a kit, sometimes the kit recipes are written with a hop at one alpha% but provide another (my case was Saaz at 3% in recipe but provided Sterling at 7.3% biggggg difference that I gladly caught).