- Joined
- Feb 28, 2019
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Hey all, I'm new to brewing and I've so far completed two batches, both designed to be IPAs, and both of them have hit all the metrics they were supposed to (ABV, final gravity, bitterness, color, etc.), except: They've been nearly devoid of hop flavor and aroma, and they've been vastly under-carbonated... I'm hoping if I describe my procedures, somebody can point me in a direction towards figuring how where I'm missing the mark.
For my first beer, I dry hopped with hole-cone Cascade and Centennial in a hop sock. I didn't have anything to weigh them down/sink them, so they floated on top, and I'm realizing this was likely a big reason why it didn't have the level of hop aromas I expected. A friend also noted that he thought he could taste evidence of exposure to too much oxygen late in fermentation, which I didn't quite understand, because I didn't open the vessel at any point until the dry hopping. (I was using a 6.5 gal fermentation bucket.) I used the Brewer's Friend priming calculator to determine how much sugar to use for priming, and I let it sit for 2 weeks. The level of carbonation was okay, but not quite as much as I wanted it to be, and the head retention was almost non-existent. It ended up tasting like a low-ABV barley wine. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't an IPA.
The second, beer, I basically followed largely the same procedure for the brewing, but I weighed the sock hops down for the dry hopping stage so they sunk to the bottom. Dry hopped for 7 days, primed using the Brewer's Friend calculator, and bottled. I waited two weeks and (today) cracked open. To my dismay, it had almost zero carbonation besides a faint "hiss" when I opened the bottle, and, similarly to the first beer, lacked the distinctive hop flavor and aroma of an IPA.
What am I doing wrong?? haha.
For my first beer, I dry hopped with hole-cone Cascade and Centennial in a hop sock. I didn't have anything to weigh them down/sink them, so they floated on top, and I'm realizing this was likely a big reason why it didn't have the level of hop aromas I expected. A friend also noted that he thought he could taste evidence of exposure to too much oxygen late in fermentation, which I didn't quite understand, because I didn't open the vessel at any point until the dry hopping. (I was using a 6.5 gal fermentation bucket.) I used the Brewer's Friend priming calculator to determine how much sugar to use for priming, and I let it sit for 2 weeks. The level of carbonation was okay, but not quite as much as I wanted it to be, and the head retention was almost non-existent. It ended up tasting like a low-ABV barley wine. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't an IPA.
The second, beer, I basically followed largely the same procedure for the brewing, but I weighed the sock hops down for the dry hopping stage so they sunk to the bottom. Dry hopped for 7 days, primed using the Brewer's Friend calculator, and bottled. I waited two weeks and (today) cracked open. To my dismay, it had almost zero carbonation besides a faint "hiss" when I opened the bottle, and, similarly to the first beer, lacked the distinctive hop flavor and aroma of an IPA.
What am I doing wrong?? haha.