Correcting under-hopped beer

[steward]

Hiyall

I just realised I made an error on my pale ale, which is now sitting in cask! Basically I used only about half the required bittering hops - my calculations suggest I'll end up with EBU 18. Fine for a mild, but not what I wanted!

Should I just boil some bittering hops up in a little water for 90 minutes, cool it, strain it and add the liquid to the cask? Anyone else tried this?

Thanks,

Steve

[mozza]

Sounds like a good plan to me, but never tried it!

[Dave S]

Hiyall

I just realised I made an error on my pale ale, which is now sitting in cask! Basically I used only about half the required bittering hops - my calculations suggest I'll end up with EBU 18. Fine for a mild, but not what I wanted!

Should I just boil some bittering hops up in a little water for 90 minutes, cool it, strain it and add the liquid to the cask? Anyone else tried this?

Thanks,

Steve

I've never tried it either, but it sounds like you might need to mature it a bit longer to marry the flavours.

[killer]

You can buy isomerised hop extract (from brewuk for example) that you add directly without a need to boil and it will impart bitterness.
I've never used it but will get probably some soon to have on hand just in case. My boiler has failed once or twice and I've had low bitterness problems.

[Beer O'Clock]

In the past, I have added isomerised hops too. It's a fail safe to add more bitterness but you lose a lot of character.

[steward]

Many thanks all. I'm going to adding some green juice now... will let you know in X weeks time how it's turned out. Like I said, I aroma hopped ok, just boo-boo'd on the bittering side.

[lancsSteve]

I made a fantastic pale ale with only 19IBUs and then massive late and dry hop additions - low IBUs in a summery pale ale arent a huge problem IMHO.