Lost hop aroma & flavour - 1 week

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Blitzer

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Hey,

Quick question I had made a beer the recipe is below. It had been bottle conditioning for 2 weeks and it was delicious, I would say quite similar Feral HopHog. Anyway now it's been there 3 weeks bottle condition at about 19c-20c, the hop flavour and aroma seems to be replaced by what I can taste as extreme bitterness?

I can quite put my finger on exactly what it is, but it used to smell and taste like candy pineapple.. what happened?
Could 1 week of extra carbonating really throw off the flavours that much? Any help on recipe or what I may fix would be appreciated.

Recipe:
1 coopers canadian
1.5kg coopers light LME
200g dextrose
10g citra @ 10
15g cascade @ 10
10g citra @ 5
15g cascade @ 5
10g citra @ flameout
15g cascade @ flameout

Fermented @ 18c.

Bottled with 2 carb drops.
 
Did you boil the hops in plain water, or did you add some of the LME to the boil too?
 
Yeah the hops were boiled in about 1040 wort (give or take my exact measurement of the LME), ran the boil for 1/2 an hour.
 
How many bottles have you tried? Could it possiibly be just one or two bottle have gone off? Bottle infection maybe?
 
Your hop additions seem optimised for aroma more than flavour, perhaps move the first addition to 20 minutes next time, try a 20, 10 and 0 schedule. I haven't used the Canadian Blonde before so I don't know how much hop flavour it has in the can, but I don't imagine it's much.

Hop aromas do fade over time in the bottle...but that doesn't really explain "extreme bitterness" you're now tasting. It looks like your recipe should have landed you in the mid 30's for IBU (maybe less if it was a small volume boil), which is obviously not "extreme". You should find it'll mellow over time though.

If you were aiming for a hophog style beer, you could make those hop schedule changes I mentioned above, and replace the 200gm dex with 800gm of DME. It'd get your OG up to a hophog like 1056, 47 IBU and 5.9%abv.

You're also close enough to dropping the kit altogether, can you boil 10 litres on your stove? If so, replace the kit with another can of LME, up the DME to 1kg and add a bittering addition of 12gm Warrior @ 60m, you'll hit similar numbers to the above. (all assuming 23l volume btw).
 
Sorry, yes 20l volume.

I was just looking for something nice and hoppy. It was nice and hoppy week 2, though week 3 it is gone. Seems awfully quick for an extreme change from candy pineapple to bitterness lacking aroma & flavour. Next time I will try move my hop additions around a bit, to 20, 10 & 0.

It may be those 2 bottles I tried had an infection or oxidation.. though I do go crazy with Starsan to avoid infection.:)
 
SN9 seems to give long lasting hop flavour. A lot of people will try and tell you not to use it because its a wine and cider yeast etc., but I have had good results with it. That said though, US05 does seem to highlight hop flavour well but the beer tends to get drier and drier as it ages.
I like to boil the full volume of water to prevent infection. I used to use 2 x 15 litre K-Mart pots with 10 litres in each for kits. I just used plain rain water and brought it to the boil with hops in there and turned off as soon as it boiled.
If you don't boil the full volume the beer will taste good at first but can go off really quick and that just kills the flavour.
This time of year beer tends to carb up quickly, after which its a good idea to keep it cool.
 
From start to finish (i.e. brewday to bottling), what is your transfer process?

Oxidised beer is much less stable and the elements you're talking about are already the least stable in a beer.
 
Please excuse my ingorance bum, I have not personal experience of this, but I was under the impression that oxidised beer had a wet cardboard taste rather than extreme bitterness?
 
I only did a 6 litre boil, so I think maybe I the full boil idea is my best bet. I transfer straight from Primary Ferment (3 weeks) into the bottle via just a standard bottle filler. Using PET bottles. (no secondary)

The extreme bitterness could be a different flavour to someone else.. it's just my pallet. I will try another this evening see if I can taste cardboard.
 
I'd still be interested to know if your whole batch if off, or just a few bottles. I had a brew recently where a few bottles were absolutely bloody disgusting, but the rest were ok.

Ed: Spelling
 
Oxidation will increase the rate those more unstable elements will degrade. You don't have to have the wet cardboard taste. My question though, is it more carbed this week? Two carb drops is fairly high carb levels and a higher carb level will affect flavour and give an increased perception of bitterness.
 
Definitely more carbonated this week. That's was my original thinking, maybe it has gone too far..

Is it correctable by venting the bottles? Or by some other means?
 
Pour a glass and stir the buggery out of it. When its a bit flatter give it a taste. If you get a mouthful of hops you've solved the riddle.

I had to do this with a batch of bitter I made that over attenuated in the bottle. Bleeding them off was tricky but worked.
 
If you leave them to mature a bit the bitterness should mellow.
 
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