Wort Bitterness

[darkhorse]

Hi all,

Did a AG irish red last night but I'm a bit puzzled about whether it is possible to assess the bitterness of a beer by sampling the boiling wort.

Last brew (all extract) I did was massively overdone on bitterness (30g Green Bullet @14%) but for this Irish Red I only used 10g of the same hops and after 40minutes I had a little taste causing alarm bells to ring.

I first thought maybe not enough sugars were harvested / converted from the grain, but my starting gravity is 1.054...

Any thoughts...

 

[THE DRUNK ARAB]

Hi all,

Did a AG irish red last night but I'm a bit puzzled about whether it is possible to assess the bitterness of a beer by sampling the boiling wort.

Last brew (all extract) I did was massively overdone on bitterness (30g Green Bullet @14%) but for this Irish Red I only used 10g of the same hops and after 40minutes I had a little taste causing alarm bells to ring.

I first thought maybe not enough sugars were harvested / converted from the grain, but my starting gravity is 1.054...

Any thoughts...

The best course of action is Don't panic. You may be worrying over nothing however.....

Post the recipe so we can look at the ingredients.

You may have extracted tannins when sparging and this can lead to a bitter taste. Another contributer could be if you used lots of crystal. This is what I have found anyway.

C&B
TDA

 

[Coodgee]

I always drink a hydrometer sample from the bottom of the kettle. it always tastes overwhelmingly of hops and tends to give me a bit of a light head for a couple of seconds. relax. it will settle out.

 

[darkhorse]

Too late on the don't panic... but I'm certainly not at the "I'm about to tip it down the sink!" stage.

Irish red

50g roast barley,
200g crystal malt
4kg pale malt

mash at an inconsistent temp averaging about 65C

Boil
10g Green bullet at 60 min
taste test and freak out at 20min
10g Willamette at 15min
10g willamette at 2min.

flame off
Cool
pitch rehydrated yeast

Gravity 1.054

Seems to be fermenting fine (so far)

 

[darkhorse]

PS probably not tannins as I had to stop sparging when I had too much liquid for my kettles (AKA pots).

 

[Coodgee]

have you ever done a german lager with a good german lager yeast? it tastes like **** till it's fully finnished and all the yeast has dropped out. just be patient.