We bottled the Great British Brew Off porter tonight – it made 40 bottles of lovely chocolaty ale.
However it was BITTER! We used a whole brick of Morris Hanbury fuggles hops, which should be 113g (see photo below for evidence!). But afterwards I checked how much a brick of hops weighs, and it is much closer to 140g! My mistake for not actually weighing it on brew day. Duh!
I went back to my recipe and recalculated the bitterness units, and it looks like the porter is 82 IBU! In my post on hop bitterness I gave a list of beer styles and their bitterness ranges – 82 IBU is nearly off the scale!
Oh well, what we do know is that bitterness eases off over time, so I think we’ll be leaving this one for at least six months before we start drinking.
