Late Addition/Higher Bitterness?

[DeBAD]

We recently brewed an IPA and although we were shooting for a pretty high IBU (about 70) with a high ratio of that IBU being driven by the bittering hops (about 70% of total IBU), the IPA tastes even more bitter than expected. Don't get me wrong, it's dang good. We knew it would be bitter and we wanted it to be, but like I said, it's maybe a little more bitter than we wanted.

Looking back through our brewing notes and reading a few other posts I'm wondering if our late extract addition might be the reason? When I entered our recipe into Brewers Friend I didn't specify we were making late extract additions.

When we brewed, we dropped in 1/3 of our LME at the beginning of the boil, then dropped in the remaining 2/3 at flame out.

Do late extract additions increase the actual IBU? I drink a lot of IPAs and this one tastes much higher than 70 to me.

Thanks for any insight.

 

[jeffjm]

One of the things that affects hop utilization is wort density. All else being equal, the denser your wort, the less utilization you get, and vice versa. By holding back your extract, you increased the amount of isomerized alpha acids in the finished product.

That's one of the major reasons to do late extract additions - counteract the increased density of a partial volume boil.

 

[DeBAD]

We did a side-by-side taste test with our IPA that I thought was a 70 IBU with a commercial IPA that's a 99. Ours is hoppier BY FAR! The late addition most definitely must have made a lot of difference.

I was curious so I ran our recipe through another calculator with the late additions specified and the IBU came out at 125! Judging by the taste of our IPA I'm not surprised at all.

We then blended ours approx 50/50 with a APA that's about 30 and it tasted about right.

I guess as we drink this batch, when we want a super hoppy beer we will drink ours straight but if we want to mellow it out a little we will blend it. On the bright side, ours has a really good taste and smells great.

"Beer problems" are never real problems. Haha!

 

[GarageDweller]

is it possible that you didn't get the wort cooled down below isomerization temps quick enough? adding to the overall time the hot wort spent in contact with the hops? Just throwing that out there as I've been hammering out my chilling process as of late and that was one thing that was put into consideration.

 

[TheBlindBeastBrewery]

What do you use for the calculator?

 

[DeBAD]

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