# Adding Biterness After Fermentation



## big78sam (26/3/11)

So I tried a 10 minute IPA with all home grown hops and the only hop additions were cascade and chinook NC in the cube. I read all the suggestions here for estimating AA of homegrown chinook and adjustments for NC and thought I was on the right track but this beer has hardly any bitterness. It had finished fermenting at 1017 (OG 1060 so about what I expected) and is way over the top sweet straight out of the fermentor. It's got amazing hop aroma and flavour but is so sweet it's not drinkable. 

I need to add bitterness and a search on here has shown me that Isohop is the best way to do this accurately however I don't have any. I could try to go to grain and grape next weekend but I know I'm going to be flat out so doubt I'll have a chance. I can think of 2 options to fix this without isohop

1 - take 3 or so litres out of the fermentor, boil up with some neutral bittering hops and cool. Then mix with the rest of the beer when adding bulk priming sugar and bottle

2 - Add the 130 or so grams of sugar for bulk priming to 2L of water and add neutral bittering hops and boil for an hour. I know the SG won't be ideal for hop utilization.

With either of the 2 options above I'll aim to add about 20 IBUs, however I understand that small boil volumes will affect the bitterness I'll get. Common sense would tell me I need to do a 2 litre boil at 200IBUs which will end up 20IBUs for a 20L batch. My calc in beersmith seems to indicate that 10g of 12% AA will give me about the 200IBUs I need. It seems to me there is no adjustment for the small boil size so I might be doing something wrong in beersmith. So my questions are...

1 - Are my solutions above possible or should I wait for Isohop?
2 - Which of the 2 options above are better?
3 - Is 10g of 12% AA for an hour about right in a 2L boil size


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## Bribie G (26/3/11)

Now, if you just want to add bitterness, a way I've found (by inadvertently adding _unwanted_ bitterness) is to get a litre sized coffee plunger, boil up 2 litres of water with 30g of Galena or another neutral high AA hop until it has boiled down enough to fit into the plunger. Plunge and add. 

Not scientific and I wouldn't even look at Beersmith for this exercise, but it will give a good boost and hopefully rescue the brew (which will of course be a tad under gravity, but only around 700 ml will end up in the keg).
The hop utilisation figures are strange to me, because every time I have made hop tea on boiling water, even without a long boil, the resulting extract has been so bitter you sip a quarter of a teaspoon and walk around for the next half hour saying "I am noot a froog moothed oowl"


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## felten (26/3/11)

I would combine the priming sugar into the bittering solution, but at the end of the boil so you don't have to worry about the SG throwing it out.


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## Bribie G (26/3/11)

Yes I missed that, if you are bottling then add the priming sugar to the boil and you should get extra utilisation, but remember that some of the sugar solution will be absorbed by the hop material so you will need to do some fancy calcs. :icon_cheers: Maybe allow for 1/3 to be wasted.


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## bum (26/3/11)

BribieG said:


> Yes I missed that, if you are bottling then add the priming sugar to the boil and you should get extra utilisation


No sugar means more bitterness, right? Did you write that wrong or am I reading it wrong?


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## Bribie G (26/3/11)

I was under the impression that more sugaz leads to better isomerisation of the AAs but then I could well be wrong as I don't do emergency hopping much :icon_cheers:


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## bum (26/3/11)

I've got no idea about the best way to add bitterness post-fermentation (my beers rarely comeout _under_-bittered :unsure: ) but based purely on IBU alone plain water will pull the most IBU. At least, that has been my understanding.

Totally happy to accept that the bitterness might be more pleasing at the regularly mentioned 1.040 but my presumption has always been that this gravity is preferred for reasons other than IBU alone. Seeing as I'm not the most scientifical brewer in the world, I can't detail what these might be beyond vague shapes of flavour and aroma, etc.

I only posted because your agreement with felten seemed (to me) to be pretty much the exact opposite of his point. Apologies to you both if this is incorrect.


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## Bribie G (26/3/11)

Last year I entered a couple of American Ambers in a minicomp and french pressed with boiling water instead of dry hopping and they did end up really bitter - so maybe the water was the cause of the "twang" - I'll read up on it :icon_cheers:


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## felten (26/3/11)

Actually now that I think about it, there was an update on brewstrong where they said the hop utilization reduction wasn't from the SG but from the amount of trub involved, and the trub absorbs some of the bittering compounds. However a higher SG (in wort) means more trub so that's why the calcs take the SG into account.


either way, adding the sugar at the end negates the hop matter absorbing some of it like Bribie said, which is a great idea.


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