• Welcome to the new forum! We upgraded our forum software with a host of new boards, capabilities and features. It is also more secure.
    Jump in and join the conversation! You can learn more about the upgrade and new features here.

Very high Hops IBUS in BS

BloemBeer

New Forum Member
Joined
May 15, 2016
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Hi Guys

New to this forum but certainly not to craft brewing.

I recently started using Beersmith instead of another package but after two batches of very bitter beer I found that Beersmith and the other software differs greatly in terms of how they calculate the IBU's in a recipe. For instance if I want plus minus 15 IBU's from a 9.6 Alpha hops at 30 mins boil my Beersmith says I need to add 32g while the other program says 17g. I have ended up with extremely bitter beer from my BS recipes so obviously the IBU's is wrong in BS. I have checked the setup of the hops and it's in both cases pellets at 9.6 Alpha Acid etc. This really makes me wonder what am I doing wrong because BS can not be that way off otherwise everybody would have noticed it.

Regards




 
Possible causes:  I'm thinking equipment or ingredient profile,  batch size off, or other setup issues. You can customize an equipment profile with the exact size kettles you are using, if you can't find a suitable one. You can also enter in the exact percentage of AA acid of your specific batch of hops and such in the ingredients- hops profile. You must also select whether boil 60 mins, 30 mins, flameout or dry (aroma)  in the hop profile which is crucial as adding hops to the boil start increases bitterness compared to flameout. Your example seems like an excessive amount of hops for that much bitterness something must be off  within the program.

CHEERS
 
BloemBeer said:
I have ended up with extremely bitter beer from my BS recipes so obviously the IBU's is wrong in BS. I have checked the setup of the hops and it's in both cases pellets at 9.6 Alpha Acid etc.

BeerSmith doesn't use any unique calculations for any part of the brewing process. The formulas used are established and accepted by the brewing community. Within Options, there are many places for you to adjust variables to suit your individual brewing style and equipment. It does take time to understand all of them and what to adjust, but the defaults tend to be pretty solid for most brewers.

For IBUs, there are three calculations available, so selecting the one that matches your previous experience will help solve most of the over bittering. Within Options > Bittering, you can adjust the additional utilization that your system gets from various hop formats.

Finally, in your equipment profile the Hop Utilization field should be at 100% as the default. You can raise that if you believe your utilization is greater than a typical system. What's important to note is that the utilization factor is what adjusts any calculation you choose. In other words, 100% utilization means that you expect to get exactly what hop efficiency is calculated (which tops out at 30% actual utilization). In your case, it seems like the difference is 50% less utilization calculated by BeerSmith than your previous program.
 
Back
Top