Beer tastes phenomenal. The flavor is awesome, I'd compare it to a cross between Union Jack and Flower Power (which is the beer I was trying to clone). It really is as good as most everything on the shelf. However, if I had one knock on the beer I'd say that bitterness lingers a little longer than necessary and the beer destroys your palate (1-2 is enough). I don't think there is anything wrong with this, but it would be nice to have several in a session. Is this perceived problem possibly because it was only bottled on Friday? or could I have changed something in the recipe that cut the lingering bitterness down a bit? If letting the beer sit for a while is the answer I'm in trouble because there was a good amount of aeration during bottling (maybe this is the problem??). Thank you in advance for responses. 7 LB Extra Light DME 1 LB Honey (flameout) .5 Crystal 10 60 min 1.0 Columbus 30 min 1.0 cascade 20 min 1.0 cascade 5 min 1.0 athanum dry hop 14 days w/ 1.0 of Amarillo, Centennial & Citra.
For your 60min addition, I believe Columbus hops generally have higher co-humulone levels (in addition to what I am assuming were AAU around 16%?). I would suspect that being a cause of the lingering harsh bitterness. What was the IBU calculation? And was OG somewhere around 1.070ish?
I didn't actual calculate IBUs I should probably do that. It was my first batch and I'm sure I didn't do a lot of stuff I should have.
Hmmm... That OG does sound low for.all that you used. Was it a 5 gallon batch? Did you do a full boil or did you top off with water after boil? Often adding water on top of the wort doesn't get mixed completely when taking gravity sample so it appears lower than it is. If you did a full boil, and it was 5gal, I'm stumped... On the other hand, with an OG that low (if accurate) and 4oz of hops (1oz of which was a very high AAU 60min addition) your bitterness to gravity ratio may have been high; leading to harsh bitterness. Do you remotely remember the AAU on each hop? No worries on not doing all the calculations your first time. If you liked it and think you'll do it again, I would recommend getting BeerSmith! Its nice to have!
You used way too much hops for a 5 gallon 1.054 OG batch. At a guess, you'd be computing around 100 IBU, which in practice would probably yield something in the mid 70's.
Ya my OG was supposed to be much, much higher. Oh well, I'm hoping it mellows a tad the next week or so. Thanks guys
Did you do a partial boil and top off with water? Assuming you didn't over-fill, it's unlikely you missed your OG by that much using only extract. It's more likely the top off water didn't completely mix with the wort and you took a gravity reading of less dense liquid.
