Hop Utilization in whirlpool ( BITTER BATCH ! )

Wow, interested to see what better minds than mine have to say. All looks well, to my eye.

 

Yeah, I don't really see what the problem could be. Twenty minutes for a hopstand should give you the bittering of about a ten minute boil, roughly; that shouldn't give you the bitterness you describe. But don't dump it: if you let it sit in the bottles for a few months the bitterness should fade somewhat. I had an overly bitter batch early on and the last six pack was the best. I should have waited on all of them.

I've tried the hopstand/whirlpool thing. Meh. I've gone back to late additions and dry-hopping.

 

What temp did you steep your grains at? I would think either that or water chemistry (which I am not too familiar with) are more likely to blame. The hops and usage of those hops look fine to me.

 

I didn't run your numbers through Beersmith to get quantitative estimates of gravity and bitterness but the recipe looks reasonable for an IPA. It's a little weird, because the pale malt is the only grain that needs to be mashed for conversion -- did you do a proper mini-mash? I'm wondering if what you find distasteful is not hop bitterness but something else, like tannins from the grains? Did you have problems hitting your mash temperatures (did the grain temperatur get too high?), could your pH have been too high, did you squeeze your grain bag. This line of inquiry could be way offbase; I just don't see any problems with the hops, assuming you like hoppy beers.

 

How young is the beer? Hop bitterness will fade some with time, so you might want to give it time. Unfortunately, hop aroma also fades, so you are looking at a tradeoff.

To me, I think of tannins and astringency as a strange harshness, which is why I was thinking about how you treated the grains. I could be way off, but if the beer is not in bottles yet*, you might try to use gelatin or some other fining that pulls polyphenols out of solution. I had success with this in a pumpkin beer that was undrinkable because of some bitter astringency that I assume was tannin that may have been extracted from pumpkin material in the boil.

*Aside: If the beer is in bottles, you violated one of my first principles of bottling: if a beer tastes bad, don't waste time bottling it. Wait it out to see if it gets better; if not dump it. Dumping beers that you spent time bottling is worse than dumping beer that is sitting in a fermenter (all those bottles to clean, with no payoff!).

 

Ok, now we're getting somewhere.

My guess is a lot of oxygen was introduced during bottling. The oxygen destroyed your delicate, flavorful essential oils over the last 3 weeks, and left behind your iso-alpha acids. Leaving your beer unbalanced towards bitterness, without hop flavor.

Give it time and the bitterness will fade - just like the hop flavor did - but the beer might never be what you intended.

You said this was batch #2 - of this particular beer, or all time? You have to very careful with exposure to O2 when it comes to IPAs (and all beers for that matter - but particularly IPAs.) I keg all my IPAs now, and go to great lengths to minimize O2 exposure. This is one of the great benefits of kegging.

 

What were the AA of your hops?

Do you know the amt of sulfate in your water? - That can have a BIG impact on perceived bitterness

 

The grains you steeped were the following:

1 1/2 lb. pale malt
1/2 lb. cara-pils malt
1/2 lb. medium crystal malt

The Pale Malt is a base malt and consequently needs to be mashed. The difference between a mash and a steep is:

· A mash is generally conducted over a 60 minute timeline vs. 30 minutes for a steep.
· The water to grain ratio is critical for a mash. You need something like 1-2 quarts of water per pound of grain. For the entire grain amount of 2.5 lbs. that translates to 2.5 – 5 quarts of water.
· During the mash you need to maintain a given temperature (e.g., 155°F for this case) over the entire timeline (which should be 60 minutes)

The fact that you steeped vs. mashed your Pale Malt may not be the source of the bitterness/astringency but I thought you should know that you should mash Pale Malt vs. just conducting a steep.

Cheers!

 

Agree with most of what you said, but there's nothing magical about 60 minutes for a mash time. Full conversion (from starches to soluble sugars and dextrins) can happen a lot faster, depending on many factors. And after that full conversion happens, mash length can be used as a knob to affect fermentability (due to allowing further breakdown of dextrins into fermentable sugars or not, as the case may be).

 

Yeast bite? Is the beer clear or hazy?

Hops at 175 f will give very little in the way of Iso-AA.

 

Hmmm... I think it's possible to get a higher than expected utilization from a hop stand and wind up a few IBU higher than you wanted. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's happened to me. But we're talking a couple IBU, not something that's going to near undrinkable.

Just taking a guess, sometimes guys get overly bitter (or under hopped) beers because they measure the hops by weight and not by AA%. This can make a HUGE difference if you get hops that are a percentage point or two different from what your recipe calls for. I'm not saying did this, but it is a fairly common mistake that can account for problems with bitterness levels.

Anyway, in the short term you can experiment with serving temperatures, which can make a big difference in perceived bitterness. And at least some of the harshness will abate over time.