Put down a brew yesteday too late to hop?

[JoeyJoeJoe]

Hi guys.

I have a second question, yesterday I put down two brews one tasted pretty good out of the fermenter sweet then bitter beerish, the second tasted sweetish but no bitterness and almost no real flavour..... It has only been down for about 12 hours and as it is at 11C w34/70 yeast I hoping it not too late to add a bit hops?

I need some bitterness and some flavour so I was thinking of doing a small boil (only got room for about 1 - 1 1/2 lires ). So now for the questions three

1. Is it too late to hop?
2.How do I go about it ? ( dont be afraid to assume that I have a learning disability when explaining)
3.Any hop suggestions and quantities? It is supposed to be a lager.... but it looks pretty brown...... it is the one on the right....

 

[Acasta]

Without knowing your recipe or anything, I'd say you need to wait longer for the beer to ferment. At 12 hours there will still be sugar in the beer and not an accurate profile of the finished product. Try it again at FG (5-7 days or more, check hydro) and then consider adding bitterness/hops with your boil method.

 

[JoeyJoeJoe]

I am just comparing the two. The first one is a brand new can of Blue mountain lager + 750 Morgans master blend lager liquid malt and .5kg of dextrose this one tastes bitter already. The secound one has the same additives but it was an old can of coles lager (just had it wanted to see how it went).

It is the coles mix I want to save I thought that if I added a malt hops soloution to far in it would start fermenting again?

 

[GalBrew]

Seriously, don't waste your time an hops with the old Coles one. Tip it and start again, it lacks bitterness because it is so old.

 

[JoeyJoeJoe]

That sounds like a very wise soloution to not try and save a $3 dollar can by buying $7 of hops but as an engineer I refuse to believe there is any problem I cant make worse by fiddling with it.

Also keep in mind it doesn't taste off just bland and I want to have a play anyway as I have never used hops before....

I have seen some youtubes on how to make hop tea? would this be the go for a bit of bitterness?

 

[GalBrew]

A hop tea will give you quite a bit of bitterness, or you could try some sort of liquid hop extract (craftbrewer and G&G have them I think). But you won't be able to eliminate other oxidation related off flavours if they are present.

 

[JoeyJoeJoe]

Thanks for the advice I bought 100grams each of Hallertau Mittlefru and Galaxy. My plan is to wait out primary fermentation (about 2 weeks) then rack 5 litres of the brew of into a glass jug that will be my un hopped control. Then make a tea consisting of

1 litre of water
15g of galaxy boiled for 10 minutes
15g of the hallertau steep for 5 miutes
French press the liquid and chuck it into the remaining 18L of the brew.
My handy home brew spread sheet reckons that will give me ~10IBUs..

Drop them temp down to 2C wait 2 weeks then bottle.

Comments?

 

[Alex.Tas]

if it tastes like nothing, you could always dry hop. Just throw in 10-20g or so of pellets into your fermenter. Smell them to decide which ones you like the most. when you go to bottle, the hops will be sitting on the top of the liquid - so try to avoid bottling that bit!
Dry hopping wont add any bitterness, only flowery aroma and taste. which may or may not be what you are after.

Good luck, and like you said, if you have the time, have a tinker with it. it may turn out tasting horrible, but at least you learnt first hand what not to do. on the other hand, it might give you great results, which is even better!

 

[Pickaxe]

Drink it, look to your next brews to improve. Learn from it. What did it lack, what did you like, what does or need? The more you tinker outside "best practices" the less you will learn, the more likely you are to **** it up. Drink it, learn from it.
Plan your next, use someone else's successful recipe, don't struggle on your own.
You made.beer, drink it. Next time, make better beer, that is what we all do.

 

[yum beer]

The picture clearly shows a lager tin well past its best.
Don't bother you won't be able to fix, no matter what you it will most likely be undrinkable.
Toss it out, get a new can and proceed from there, knowing you will get something you can drink at the end.
Lager + Hallertau
Pale Ale + Galaxy.