peebee
Out of Control
I'd made a promise to follow this up hadn't I. Well one keg/cask is emptied and I'm on the second so about time I got around to that follow up:
The hop extract did a very reasonable job of repairing my blunder. No hint of unwelcome side-effects (like artificial flavours) but it would have to be quite badly off-flavoured to do that (all of 4.5ml of extract in a 20 litre Corny keg). But this stuff is bitter! I calculated the dose quite carefully and you need some faith in that calculation, and then measure it out carefully (1ml syringe, not a teaspoon!). This is not an operation for those susceptible to "oh, and just a dash more" principals (okay, I'm susceptible to that when adding brandy to Xmas puddings). Even with care I was, at times, able to think I might of over-done it? I guess this operation is always going to be a "sticking plaster" over the fault so, as long as you know its there you can attribute all sorts of things to it.
Perhaps I could detect something missing? Boiling in N tens of grams of Challenger hops would have had an impact on the flavour, which can't be replaced, so imagination fills in the void with all sorts of screwy explanations.
Maybe "artificial flavours" crop up when relying on just the extract in a reasonably bitter light flavoured brew? Quite safe when only replacing 50% of "real" hops in a relatively mildly hopped strong flavoured brew.
