On a whim last month I brewed a SMaSH pale lager with ingredients on hand. I intentionally kept the IBU’s low (around 17) but now after kegging and tasting I feel it is too sweet and needs some bittering to be enjoyable. A quick google search yielded hop teas and iso-alpha extract as means to increase bitterness. Anyone with experience with either and suggestions.
Thanks
I find hop tea disgusting and ineffective. Iso alpha extract works great. Or you can brew an more bitter batch and blend them.
Thanks. This is meant to be on tap New Year’s Eve, as an easy drinking 5% pale lager. Going to try out the extract.
Where do y’all get iso alpha extract that can add bitterness to finished beer? I can’t seem to ever find it.
Ditto. I’ve used many hop extracts and advanced hop products, but I’ve never seen Iso-AA extract in homebrewer sized quantities at any of the online shops I frequent.
I used to be able to find the extract but I haven’t needed it in a long time. Here’s another thing you can try if you’re not twitchy about it … get a small amount of water to a boil or close to a boil, add a small amount (half a gram?) of calcium sulfate (gypsum) and swirl/stir that and add it to the keg. As long as the beer is just slightly underhopped, the CaSO4 will bring some crispness to the beer and take that sweet edge off. It should help make the beer slightly drier than it is. I really hate mucking around with a beer like this post-brewday but sometimes it’s necessary. I have back-sulfated a beer, back-chlorided a beer, added hops to the keg and also added extract to the keg and all of these will move the beer in the direction you want. If the half-gram doesn’t seem to do it … you could always do it again with another half gram.
Yeah, I couldn’t source any either.