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Blichmann Hop-Rocket

jimcost63

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Brewers,
I am an All grain brewer with many successful brews but still consider myself as a beginner.
I am brewing in a 10 gallon boiler and a 10 gallon mash tun.
I have added a Blichmann Hop-rocket to my equipment.
I use an immersion chiller and pump cooled wort through the HR on the way to my fermentor.
How do I figure out how many IBU's am I getting or is it just good for aroma.
I can recirculate through my whirlpool port to better utilize the hops.
Ant Advise would be greatly appreciated
 
My advice is probably what you don't want to hear, but here it goes:  The IBU is a very imperfect and often unreliable measurement of the perception of bitterness in beer.  The modeling of IBU in brewing is even more nebulous in that it is very process specific and based upon a highly variable and singularly specific measured value in hops.

If you want to quantify the bittering you get from your hoprocket, then I would recommend that you pick something that you are familiar with brewing and fully substitute late hop additions with the same amount of hops in the hop rocket.  Compare the bitterness with the base recipe and note the difference in bitterness (note the taste of bitterness and not the flavor sensation and aroma of the hops, as this is sometimes confused).  Develop your own palate for estimating the sensation bitterness and then adjust the utilization of the hop additions to match what your senses think it should be.  you can do this in BeerSmith 3 by adjusting the whirlpool/steeping temperature of the hop addition as well as the duration to get what you estimate the bitterness contribution to be. 

I did this several years back with taking all the boil hops out and adding them as whirlpool hops in a wheat beer.  From that, I developed my own matrix of how much hop material to add for how long and at what temperature to give me the bitterness sensation that I wanted.  While I still use the calculated IBU number as a guide, I do not believe that I would be within 10% or 15% of an actual measured IBU value in my process.

 
That is very good advice, after all it is our own palate we are trying to please.
I will certainly try that out on my next batch.
 
Jimcost63, how did you get on with the Hop Rocket?  I've just been given a similar product, the Hop Missile and planning my next brew to include this.
 
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