Hello guys,
this is my first post here, so let me introduce myself a bit.
I'm (obviously) a beer lover and I have been trying to master the art of homebrewing for the past two years with quite good results. Not all batches were great, but in the end no beer was thrown away.
So my setup is a 35 liter Klarstein kettle and I mainly focus on high fermentation beers. I did a few pilsners which turned out great though, but I'm mainly after IPA perfection.
Basically, in the last few batches, I have been experiencing some overly bitter flavors after the priming is done (about a week after bottling).
Example recipe that turned out too bitter and with surprisingly low aroma:
Grains: Chateau Pale Ale 2RS 5,5 kg
Mashing 70 min @66°C in 22 liters of water.
After 70 minutes I raised the temperature to 77°C then lifted the filter part of the kettle to drain the grains and did a circulation of the wort to create the grain bed. Then I sparged with 18 liters of water heated to about 77°C.
I then brought the wort to a boil for 75 minutes.
Hop additions were: @15 min: 30g of Styrian Dragon with alpha acid content according to packaging: 9%
After the boil was completed I cooled down to below 80°C and added 20g of Styrian Dragon for 20 minutes.
According to calculators this should give a bitterness of about 13 IBU (if I checked that correctly)
Then I cooled the wort down to 25°C, moved the wort to the fermenter and pitched the Safale US05 yeast without rehydration or a starter (11.5g into 30 liters of wort), the OG was 1047.
After two weeks I dry hopped with the following hops (no racking to a second fermenter):
After these 3 days the FG was 1006 so I poured the beer into a second fermentor and added the dextrose:
After pouring (which I filter a bit to remove the hop residue but it is not a very fine filter to remove the yeast, basically a kitchen filter) I was left with 26 liters of beer to which I added 170g of dextrose dissolved in 150 ml of water to aim to about 2.3 volumes of CO2.
I left the closed fermenter for about 25 minutes, then bottled.
Tasting:
I tasted the beer before fermentation and it was, as I expected, sweet with a hint of bitterness.
Before dry hopping, the beer was no longer sweet, but also I couldn't feel much bitterness anymore (which was perfect). There was some noticeable CO2 already present in the beer.
After dry hopping, when I opened the fermenter, there was some nice aromas that filled the room. I tasted the beer and I couldn't notice any bitterness, it was only lacking more CO2, so I was happy
After the first week of priming, I tasted no aroma, but quite a lot of bitterness.
After two weeks, some aroma was present and a little less bitterness, but still too much.
After three weeks, aroma was more present in beer, with bitterness the same as before.
After 4 weeks the aroma started to diminish with no change to bitterness.
Now, I am not exactly sure why this happens. I don't think there are infection problems (but I could be wrong of course) because I tend to be quite careful to sanitize everything (using starsan). I am also using inox fermenter now (this recipe was the first) and the results are similar to the ones where I was using plastic fermenters.
I am thinking that probably the hops are too old (all of the above are older than 1 year since they were opened and I have been storing them in a freezer after I read that this is something I should do, unfortunately for a few months after opening I just stored them in a refrigerator so this is surely a factor).
So if anyone can give me some input of what I am doing wrong to produce too bitter beer with so little aroma when dry hopping quite a lot, any information would be very useful and appreciated. One more piece of information: my beers did have a lot more aroma when I first started brewing and were not as bitter. (Writing this, I am getting more and more sure that old hops have a lot to do with diminished aroma, just not sure why it would make beer bitter)
Currently I am testing my own theory (about old hops) and I just brewed a similar recipe and dry hopped with a new bag of Citra and some (not as old) Amarillo, so will see if that helps.
Thank you for reading this lengthy post and any comment/information regarding the process that you can give me.
Best regards,
kwhtre
this is my first post here, so let me introduce myself a bit.
I'm (obviously) a beer lover and I have been trying to master the art of homebrewing for the past two years with quite good results. Not all batches were great, but in the end no beer was thrown away.
So my setup is a 35 liter Klarstein kettle and I mainly focus on high fermentation beers. I did a few pilsners which turned out great though, but I'm mainly after IPA perfection.
Basically, in the last few batches, I have been experiencing some overly bitter flavors after the priming is done (about a week after bottling).
Example recipe that turned out too bitter and with surprisingly low aroma:
Grains: Chateau Pale Ale 2RS 5,5 kg
Mashing 70 min @66°C in 22 liters of water.
After 70 minutes I raised the temperature to 77°C then lifted the filter part of the kettle to drain the grains and did a circulation of the wort to create the grain bed. Then I sparged with 18 liters of water heated to about 77°C.
I then brought the wort to a boil for 75 minutes.
Hop additions were: @15 min: 30g of Styrian Dragon with alpha acid content according to packaging: 9%
After the boil was completed I cooled down to below 80°C and added 20g of Styrian Dragon for 20 minutes.
According to calculators this should give a bitterness of about 13 IBU (if I checked that correctly)
Then I cooled the wort down to 25°C, moved the wort to the fermenter and pitched the Safale US05 yeast without rehydration or a starter (11.5g into 30 liters of wort), the OG was 1047.
After two weeks I dry hopped with the following hops (no racking to a second fermenter):
- 120g Styrian Dragon AA: 9%
- 120g Citra AA: 12 %
- 120g Vic Secret AA: 16 %
After these 3 days the FG was 1006 so I poured the beer into a second fermentor and added the dextrose:
After pouring (which I filter a bit to remove the hop residue but it is not a very fine filter to remove the yeast, basically a kitchen filter) I was left with 26 liters of beer to which I added 170g of dextrose dissolved in 150 ml of water to aim to about 2.3 volumes of CO2.
I left the closed fermenter for about 25 minutes, then bottled.
Tasting:
I tasted the beer before fermentation and it was, as I expected, sweet with a hint of bitterness.
Before dry hopping, the beer was no longer sweet, but also I couldn't feel much bitterness anymore (which was perfect). There was some noticeable CO2 already present in the beer.
After dry hopping, when I opened the fermenter, there was some nice aromas that filled the room. I tasted the beer and I couldn't notice any bitterness, it was only lacking more CO2, so I was happy
After the first week of priming, I tasted no aroma, but quite a lot of bitterness.
After two weeks, some aroma was present and a little less bitterness, but still too much.
After three weeks, aroma was more present in beer, with bitterness the same as before.
After 4 weeks the aroma started to diminish with no change to bitterness.
Now, I am not exactly sure why this happens. I don't think there are infection problems (but I could be wrong of course) because I tend to be quite careful to sanitize everything (using starsan). I am also using inox fermenter now (this recipe was the first) and the results are similar to the ones where I was using plastic fermenters.
I am thinking that probably the hops are too old (all of the above are older than 1 year since they were opened and I have been storing them in a freezer after I read that this is something I should do, unfortunately for a few months after opening I just stored them in a refrigerator so this is surely a factor).
So if anyone can give me some input of what I am doing wrong to produce too bitter beer with so little aroma when dry hopping quite a lot, any information would be very useful and appreciated. One more piece of information: my beers did have a lot more aroma when I first started brewing and were not as bitter. (Writing this, I am getting more and more sure that old hops have a lot to do with diminished aroma, just not sure why it would make beer bitter)
Currently I am testing my own theory (about old hops) and I just brewed a similar recipe and dry hopped with a new bag of Citra and some (not as old) Amarillo, so will see if that helps.
Thank you for reading this lengthy post and any comment/information regarding the process that you can give me.
Best regards,
kwhtre