Ok so I've been doing BIAB for about six months now an am having a pretty serious problem. My finished product has almost no hop bitterness. I am adding the right amount of hops, weighed out on a kitchen scale, at the right times, but have yet to produce any brews with any amount of Bitterness. Tepuble shoot me here, my last brew was an apa that should have clocked in at a hoppy 42 ibu based on beer smith. I tried it today and it's about as hoppy as an adjunct lager. I mean wtf? Also my hop aroma is there, but insanely fruity, like goddamn grapefruit nothing you've ever gotten from a commercial brew. What's going on?
Problems with hop bitterness
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What hops are you using and when? Tell us your hopping schedule.
Yeah definitely need a process and recipe to figure this one out.
bennie1986
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Did you make sure to change all the settings in beer smith? Like the batch size, boil volume, equipment, mash, ect.
ObsidianJester
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The type and quality of your hops is very important.
Also your tastes to the beer style may not mesh well.
Tossing a lot of hops in to a brown ale on some occasions for example leads to something that is hoppy to a lager macro drinker but to the rest it tastes like brown koolaid.
Also your tastes to the beer style may not mesh well.
Tossing a lot of hops in to a brown ale on some occasions for example leads to something that is hoppy to a lager macro drinker but to the rest it tastes like brown koolaid.
bennie1986
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ObsidianJester said:
+1 did you change the Aa % cause I've yet to buy a bag of hops that was exactly the same as the last. It's never been the same as the the program defaults to.
My hop schedule was
1.22 oz cascade 60 min
0.61 oz cascade 30 min
0.30 oz cascade 15 min
0.30 oz cascade 5 minutes
I'm adding the hops directly to the boil, I got pellet hops from my lhbs they are from hop union if I remember right. I adjusted the Aa to 6.2 percent as listed on the package. Yeast was Nottingham. OG was 1.056 Fg was 1.01. It's just, not that hoppy. I've had the same problems with all my recipes regardless of hops (columbus, centennial, Amarillo etc) or recipe (ipa, apa, blonde, porter...) I could just throw an extra oz at sixty to be sure I got some bitterness but I really want to be able to predict and plan my beers.
1.22 oz cascade 60 min
0.61 oz cascade 30 min
0.30 oz cascade 15 min
0.30 oz cascade 5 minutes
I'm adding the hops directly to the boil, I got pellet hops from my lhbs they are from hop union if I remember right. I adjusted the Aa to 6.2 percent as listed on the package. Yeast was Nottingham. OG was 1.056 Fg was 1.01. It's just, not that hoppy. I've had the same problems with all my recipes regardless of hops (columbus, centennial, Amarillo etc) or recipe (ipa, apa, blonde, porter...) I could just throw an extra oz at sixty to be sure I got some bitterness but I really want to be able to predict and plan my beers.
wonderbread23
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Few things..
1. That isn't that much hops, especially by the standard of a lot of APA's. 42 IBUs calculated can be considerably less based on your system's hop utilization. What is you boil like? How quick are you cooling the wort?
2. I'm surprised that you're getting insane hop aroma and flavor from that. Are you sure the fruitiness isn't esters? What temp are you fermenting at?
3. What is your recipe? Too many caramel malts can mask some of the bitterness.
1. That isn't that much hops, especially by the standard of a lot of APA's. 42 IBUs calculated can be considerably less based on your system's hop utilization. What is you boil like? How quick are you cooling the wort?
2. I'm surprised that you're getting insane hop aroma and flavor from that. Are you sure the fruitiness isn't esters? What temp are you fermenting at?
3. What is your recipe? Too many caramel malts can mask some of the bitterness.
bennie1986
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Defiantly not enough hops to get what your after.
That should be a decent amount of bitterness in a pale ale.
One of the things that comes to my mind is that this is a partial boil. If that's the case, and you're boiling, say, 2.5 gallons and then topping up with 2.5 gallons of water, that will give you 50% of the bitterness of a full boil. Is that possibly what's happening here?
I wonder if it has something to do with the water or partial boil like yooper said. You do loose bitterness on a partial boil which can be the culprit. Have you tried different yeasts? I know certain yeasts I have used seem to make the bitterness less noticeable but I'm not too familiar with notti.
Shouldn't matter leaf or pellet. Usually have to use about 10 percent more leaf to achieve same or similar results (from what I have read) but occasionally I use leaf in the same quantities and can't tell the difference. I would try another yeast like us-05 (to me I seem to get more of a bite from the hop bitterness with this and also cleaner taste). And a more vigorous boil.
phuff7129
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Your problem sounds very familiar. I started out doing extract and my ipa's and apa's had really nice hop profiles. When I switched to all grain, my ipa's and apa's just didn't have a good bitterness and the hop flavor was just a mess.
My issue was water chemistry. Turns out my tap water was really alkaline and low in sulfates. This was makings mash ph way too high and not enough sulfates to improve bitterness perception.
My solution was RO water and using the water chemistry primer found on this website under brewing science.
Learning water chemistry has taking the quality of my beers to a whole other level. Learning water chemistry has been the single most important thing I have done to improve my beer. If you do all grain, learning water chemistry will make you a better brewer.
My issue was water chemistry. Turns out my tap water was really alkaline and low in sulfates. This was makings mash ph way too high and not enough sulfates to improve bitterness perception.
My solution was RO water and using the water chemistry primer found on this website under brewing science.
Learning water chemistry has taking the quality of my beers to a whole other level. Learning water chemistry has been the single most important thing I have done to improve my beer. If you do all grain, learning water chemistry will make you a better brewer.
geckholm
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Here is what I found, I had the same problem (though not BIAB). I had been taking pellets, and putting them in cheesecloth to contain the debris. What I ended up doing was making the pouch I created too tight, not leaving a lot of room for the the hops to move around etc. Once I moved to 5 gallon paint straining bags, problem solved, got the bitterness I was looking for.
I did that on my first few batches with the cheese cloth and same issue. I just dump then in the boil now and it is a huge difference. The op said he was putting them in the boil so I assumed he wasn't using a bag or anything.
