Impact of accidental early hop addition and low OG

barbarianbrewer · September 3, 2013, 10:23pm

Yesterday I brewed NB’s English Pale Ale extract kit. It was a good brew day except for 2 mistakes.
1. When adding 2nd LME at 15 minutes remaining I also added the final 1 oz of UK Kent Goldings hops. This last hop addition should have been at 1 min remaining.
2. When adding water to the fermenter to reach specified OG of 1.050 I added too much water and wound up with an OG of 1.0473 (temp adjusted).

While I know neither mistake will ruin my beer, I am curious what impact these mistakes will have and if there are any tweaks I could do to modify their impact. I don’t want to make it worse by tinkering. But I don’t want to leave a easy fix on the table either.

muddywater_grant · September 3, 2013, 10:35pm

It will be slightly more bitter and have more hop flavor.

What was the alpha on the ekg? I bet you didn’t add 5 ibus’s. But with the exact alpha I could tell you.

Add more EKG for dryhop to make up for the lack of late aroma addition.

brewingdan · September 4, 2013, 1:04am

Yup, slightly more bitter and less hop aroma.

You can either leave it or like above, dry hop and boil up and add more dme to reach the 1.050.

If it were me, I’d just dry hop

barbarianbrewer · September 4, 2013, 3:42pm

The alpha acid for the EKG is 7.2%. Using an online calculator I see that I boosted the IBUs about 9 points (39.32 to 48.04). (Boil Volume: 3.5 gallons ; 2 oz EKG at 60 min; 1 oz EKG at 15 min or 1 min)

According to BJCP site (
http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style08.php
) my mistakes push the OG & IBUs near the edges, but still inside, the specs for an English Pale Ale. So I may just leave it and see. But, If I did dry-hop, how much EKGs should I add?

muddywater_grant · September 4, 2013, 6:10pm

[quote=“BarbarianBrewer”]The alpha acid for the EKG is 7.2%. Using an online calculator I see that I boosted the IBUs about 9 points (39.32 to 48.04). (Boil Volume: 3.5 gallons ; 2 oz EKG at 60 min; 1 oz EKG at 15 min or 1 min)

According to BJCP site (
http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style08.php
) my mistakes push the OG & IBUs near the edges, but still inside, the specs for an English Pale Ale. So I may just leave it and see. But, If I did dry-hop, how much EKGs should I add?[/quote]

half an oz to an oz.

And you sure you read the alpha right. I have never seen EKG that high. Usually at the 5% mark.

barbarianbrewer · September 5, 2013, 3:30am

Double checked and they are from Hop Union and the Alpha Acid level is 7.2% (beta 2.6%)

I think I’ll try dry-hopping a half ounce

flars · September 5, 2013, 12:23pm

[quote=“BarbarianBrewer”]Yesterday I brewed NB’s English Pale Ale extract kit. It was a good brew day except for 2 mistakes.
1. When adding 2nd LME at 15 minutes remaining I also added the final 1 oz of UK Kent Goldings hops. This last hop addition should have been at 1 min remaining.
2. When adding water to the fermenter to reach specified OG of 1.050 I added too much water and wound up with an OG of 1.0473 (temp adjusted).

While I know neither mistake will ruin my beer, I am curious what impact these mistakes will have and if there are any tweaks I could do to modify their impact. I don’t want to make it worse by tinkering. But I don’t want to leave a easy fix on the table either.[/quote]

It is very difficult to nearly impossible to evenly mix the wort of an extract kit when topping off with water. There will be layers within the fermentor which are more water than extract and vice versa. You won’t be able to determine in which of the layers your hydrometer sample is from. You will have the OG the kit specifies if you top off to the 5 gallon mark on your fermentor. Saves a lot of time and hassle also.