Threw in too many hops!

[studio1]

Isn't that a misnomer?

Anyway - accidentally doubled my boiling addition of simcoe and cascade into a 1.052 pale ale yesterday - putting in around 70 IBU - beer is now in fermenter with plenty of WLP001.

No too keen on a pale ale that bitter - was thinking of upping the beer to an IPA by adding a can or so of LME (to aim for what would have been an OG of around 1.070) straight into the fermenter or boil with some water first - any issues ?  I thought it best to do so at high krausen so that there are sufficient yeast cells to handle the step up.

The other alternative I thought of was fermenting a batch of unhopped LME seperately and blending after fermentation - only issue is that I have no temp control for a 2nd fermenter,

[Grant R Baker]

I think you have stated your options pretty well.

Your second idea is about right...  easiest fix is to make another batch up without Hops then blend, I would try to do that before fermenting but many blends are after fermentation.

Your gonna need some storage space for that and you will have twice as much of the same beer.

 

Another option would be to darken then beer up with a small blend of dark malt and make up a classical Porter... which was often a blend of an old beer with a new dark beer (Well so one book I read thought so). That would slightly reduce our IBU and balance it out with a heavy malty flavour (not at all the beer you intended tho).

Lastly you could just leave it.  Give it time for the hops to calm down and then drop a pinch of white table sugar into each pint as you drink it (I had to do this once myself after a similar cockup)... It might sound odd but the smallist pinch of sugar sprinkled in the over hopped Pale Ale will help make it drinkable.

[Hillman]

Another option would be to stock up on Liberty C!tra and Tuatara Double Trouble. Drink your way through a few bottles of those and a 70 IBU Pale Ale will seem positively refreshing.

Seriously though, if I were in that situation I wouldn't try to muck around with it took much -- there's a lot of risk of infection with blending, and if you let it condition in the bottle for six weeks or so you might find it quite palatable.

[Michael]

70 IBU you say? Send it to me if it is too bitter for you. :)