AAU's instead of oz.

[fishbone]

Hi there,

Many recipes online specify the amount of hops to use in units of AAU's instead of weight.  It's very likely that I'm simply overlooking the feature, but is there a way to add hops to a recipe in units of AAU's instead of weight?  I can't even find the AAU listing anywhere.

[BeerSmith]

Hi,
  No, I don't have AAUs in the current version but you can calculate them as:  AAU = (hops wt in oz) x (alpha % of hops).

  Let me add that AAUs are a very gross way to estimate bitterness as they ignore the most important factor which is the amount of time the hops are boiled.  Any of the IBU equations in BeerSmith when matched up against the IBU range for a particular style will give you a much better beer.

Brad

[fishbone]

I completely agree that AAUs are a gross way of estimating bitterness, but that's not the purpose of the AAU measurement; in a recipe they're used in place of a weight, not in place of IBU's.  4 AAU's of a particular hop added at 60 minutes will provide different IBU's than 4 AAU's added at 45 minutes, however this is true of weight at well.

What I'm looking for is a way to add, say, Centenniel hops to my recipe, but rather than specify a 1oz. addition, I want to specify a 12.8AAU addition and have it automatically fill in the weight for me based on the alpha acid content of the hops that I actually have.  It removes that alpha acid variation from the equation; so that when I share the recipe with a friend, I can say "add 12.8 AAU at 60 minutes", which negates any differences in alpha acids.