A high bitterness is desired in bitter beer styles such as IPAs, but the bitterness is not appreciated in every beer style.
If you finished fermenting and took a sample just to find out that the beer is too bitter, I feel you as it happened to me before.
In this article, I’ll share some methods for reducing the bitterness in beer after fermentation and a few tips on how to control bitterness for your next batch.
Why is your homebrew beer too bitter?
Before we get to the methods and tips, It’s important to spot the reason for beer being too bitter. Bitterness usually comes from hops and that’s probably the cause behind the bitterness you perceive in your beer.
Although adding too many hops during boiling is the main reason for overly bitter beers, sometimes people perceive alcohol taste as bitterness or astringency which comes from tannins and perhaps even some similar off-flavors such as weird grassy taste which can also come from the boiling of low alpha acid hops.
So in most instances, It’s the hops, I believe that the following tips will help you make your beer less bitter.
1. Age until bitterness mellows
Any fresh beer tastes different and is usually worse than the beer that had time to sit out and age.
Aging is the best way to mellow strong flavors such as hop bitterness or harsh, bitter alcohol flavors.
It may take more than a few weeks, but the eventually strong bitter taste will mellow and the beer will taste better.
However, I wouldn’t recommend long aging for beers that are supposed to be enjoyed quickly. Thus, beers such as IPAs or wheat beers shouldn’t be aged for more than a few weeks as you want to enjoy them while they are still fresh and new.
Wheat and hops degrade over time and although the beer will still be fine and the bitterness will drop, you’ll also lose the freshness that comes from rich hoppy flavors or lovely protein haze from the wheat.
If you brewed other high-ABV beers and they are bitter then aging will be the correct choice. It’s normal for styles such as Imperial stout to have harsh alcoholic flavors which can be intimidating but they go away with time and the same can be said for the strong bitterness that comes from hops.
2. Add lactose to neutralize the bitterness
Sugar is a great way of dealing with bitterness because it neutralizes it, it’s just important not to make the beer too sweet this way because then you have another problem.
It’s impossible to add any fermentable sugar such as malt extract, corn sugar, or honey into a finished beer without it starting to ferment again.
Fortunately, there’s lactose, the unfermentable sugar which is ideal for back sweetening!
Add 1 pound per 5 gallons if you want to slightly improve the sweetness and thus mask the bitter character of your beer. If the beer is really bitter feel free to add more than a pound because lactose isn’t really that sweet, so it’s hard to put too much of it and make the beer annoyingly sweet.
If you want to be sure you are not adding too much, play with the measures in a glass and when you figure out how much lactose feels right in a sample, then put it with the rest of the beer and you are ready for bottling.
3. Serve with sugar
If you already bottled your beer you can serve it with table sugar, honey, or some interesting sweet syrups such as maple syrup.
Put some in the glass and pour the beer over, stir a bit, and voila, you got a beer cocktail. You can also add some mint or whatever you have in mind.
4. Blend it with a less bitter, sweeter beer
There’s always a solution to blend a bitter beer with another less bitter beer or a beer with plenty of residual sugars that add sweetness.
You can age it and see how good it gets and in the meanwhile, you can brew another beer and then mix them if aging didn’t help.
Who cares if the beer you made isn’t exactly as the recipe calls for as long as it’s good? Experimenting is a lovely practice that should be encouraged in homebrewing.
Are there rules to what beers you can mix? There are hardly any, but I wouldn’t mix ales with lagers, sour beers with stouts and porters, or wheat beers with any highly hopped beer.
I’d brew another similar recipe but this time add less bittering hops or add extra residual sugars by using different attenuation yeast, more crystal malt (still don’t go above 10% if you don’t want off-flavors), or lactose.
Another thing you could try is to perhaps make a darker beer if you already have a pale beer that’s bitter and then create a crossover red beer.
5. Use the right hops and know your boiling duration
These are tips for brewing, and although they won’t help you reduce bitterness after fermentation they will help you get better results on the next brew day.
Hops are the primary reason why beer tastes bitter and it’s just as important to calculate the bittering time as it is to know what hops to use.
The longer you boil hops, the more bitterness you create. Some standard in homebrewing which you’ll find in most recipes is 60 minute boil as it creates nice bitterness when the correct hops are used.
However, it’s not necessary to boil for 60 minutes, as you can boil for 30-45 minutes and still get proper bitterness.
How much bitterness will hops realize is also greatly dependent on which hops you use. Thus, low-alpha acid hops won’t produce as much bitterness as high-alpha acid hops.
In my opinion, you should only use high-alpha acid hops for bittering as boiling plenty of low-alpha acid hops even for less than 60 minutes can result in grassy or astringent off-taste.
Low alpha acid hops have their purpose for flavoring or giving that touch of aroma to the beer but aren’t ideal for bittering purposes.
So, the conclusion is to use the right hops for bittering and the right hops for flavoring or adding aroma, and finally, if 60 minutes extracts too much bitterness boil them for 45 minutes or so.
There are useful calculators that will calculate the IBU you are looking for based on the hops used and gravity information, so don’t guess when there’s technology to guide you.
6. Ensure there are no tannins
I just wanted to mention that sometimes the perceived bitterness comes from tannins which are responsible for astringent off-taste.
Technically, astringent off-taste isn’t a flavor, but rather a sensation we can feel in our mouths. Tannins are great in red wine because grapes are full of them, but not so in beer so it’s important to get rid of them.
Tannins are found in the husk, so homebrewers sometimes introduce them to the wort during the mash. I have written more information on this topic in my article related to squeezing the brewing bag, so you can find more information there even if you use some other method besides BIAB.
Final take
An overly bitter beer is rarely appreciated, so unless you are brewing a really bitter pilsner or IPA you should find a way to reduce the bitterness, either in this or the next batch.
Not all people experience bitterness in the same way, so before you decide to experiment with bitterness reduction invite your friends and family and ask them for a review.
If the beer is really too bitter for everyone, you have a problem, but hey, some people like the bitterness and you might have just created a new style of beer!