The best way to describe it is a “harsh bitterness” mentioned elsewhere in this post by others. Confoundingly, the batches were somewhat uneven also with one bottle of IPA or APA being ok to good and the next meh or worse. That problem has went away with more batches, mostly lagers, under my belt and probably reflects brewing technique improving 
(I hope). So…I’m about ready to try again, ph meter in hand.
Don’t want to derail the thread anymore, but just wanted to mention one other thing… I’m in the same boat, with bottled IPAs. The other thing that I think is killing my IPAs is oxidation. The late hop additions and dry hops just die after a few weeks. One thing that I found helps, though, is starting the dry hop just as fermentation ends. You lose some of that raw hop aroma, but since the yeast are still active, they can help scrub some of the O2 introduced from dry hopping. It seems to really help with longevity! We’ll have to compare notes when you get back into them.
Ok, derail over!
