Soft Water IPA Question

[mrskunk]

So I brewed an Amarillo IPA with poland spring water, which i later found out is rather soft. ~1 week in the keg it tasted fantastic, got the tropical flavors and a good amount of bitterness.

Fast forward to 2 weeks I get none of that, it tastes like a slightly more bitter BM's Cent Blonde.

Now my question, could the soft water attribute to this or should I be looking elsewhere

 

[Yooper]

So I brewed an Amarillo IPA with poland spring water, which i later found out is rather soft. ~1 week in the keg it tasted fantastic, got the tropical flavors and a good amount of bitterness.

Fast forward to 2 weeks I get none of that, it tastes like a slightly more bitter BM's Cent Blonde.

Now my question, could the soft water attribute to this or should I be looking elsewhere

It's probably aging a bit. As IPAs age, they "lose" hops aroma and flavor and the bitterness begins to taste more pronounced since the flavor and aroma have faded. You can try dryhopping in the keg to counteract that.

 

[mrskunk]

It's a pretty drastic change in a week though, and its not very bitter especially compared to last week.

 

[mrskunk]

I wondered about the water because I know harder water makes the hops "pop" so I thought maybe that the flavor I expected was just the beer being green.

Like when i brewed the cent. blonde, the first week in the keg the citrus from the hops was super pronounced but that faded within a week.

 

[jwplessner]

With a strongly hopped beer the flavor dropoff can be very steep early in the beer's aging process. You can take steps post-fermentation to slow aging. Keeping the beer cold and limiting oxygen exposure will really help preserve hop flavor.

 

[mrskunk]

its not just the hop flavor though, the bitterness is gone as well.

I'm just wondering what I can do since while fun I dont think it would be good for anyone if i drank a 5 gallon batch in a week.

But what confuses me is when I kegged it it tasted like a 60 ibu beer, 2 weeks later prolly ~20 based on my swmbo-Ihatebitterbeer-ometer

 

[beerkrump]

Look online for their water analysis. It does look like it is low in hardness. Adding some gypsum should help that out.

 

[mrskunk]

yea im hoping the next batch can last more than a week in the keg

 

[D_Nyholm]

I'm noticing this with all my hoppier beers. It just seems that all the flavor and bitterness really isn't there. At least the flavor and bitterness that I am expecting. A 40 IBU pale ale has almost no hop bitterness or flavor. I wasn't sure if it was my process or something else. But with 20-30 beers all tasting almost the same as each others there has to be something more. I have tried adding Burton water salts to my beers but without knowing the problem, that hasn't really helped, nor helped me narrow down the problem.

I got the towns water report and it seems we are lacking or on the low end of the recommended levels of almost all minerals except for chloramine which I understand is bad.

 

[mrskunk]

yea my other beer I tried, my rye IPA seems to have suffered the same fate, next batch I'm definitely trying sum gypsum