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hop pellets vs dried whole ratio

Broyler58

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Jun 16, 2009
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Have always used pellets.  Friend gave me some cascade and saazs whole hops.  Gonna dry them out whole.  Is there a basic ratio of pellet to dry whole?  I will experiment in the future but I wanted to get an idea of where to begin.
 
More to the point: does BeerSmith make the calculation for whole hops when selected in the hops section. I had a good crop of hops this year, all dried and ready to go. I am working on a Green Flash recipe and have added the homegrown as whole hops, alpha 8 in the library.  Knowing my hop schedule and final IBU does BeerSmith fix this for sub over pellets as dried whole hops are mostly air?
 
Got good information from BeerSmith's calculation hops bitterness page. Answered my question if the ratios are correct for leaf hops compared to the IBU I'm seeking.
 
I've got first year hop plants so next year will be (hopefully) the first big harvest. From what I've read - since you don't know the actual IBU of your hops - home grown hops should be used for the flavor / aroma additions. And you would use purchased hops for your primary bittering hops.

'course I don't know shinola about this ... still researching 
 
Talked to my beer supplies guy.  He recommended starting out at 3-4 times the amount of pellets used.  So I'm going to try that tomorrow when I brew my latest pale.  Then adjust from there.  Just adds more fun to the process.
 
I just brewed an IPA yesterday based on Jamil's Green Flash grain bill.  I plugged in the total IBU number and checked the whole hop box in BeerSmith.  I then measured out the additions by weight- obviously a huge volume by comparison, and did the whole brew with just my home grown.  I tasted the wort after the gravity reading and there was definite hop presence.  I plan to do two dry hop additions, but I don’t think I have enough of the home grown left.  In any case this was a great experiment.
 
There is a -10% adjustment made in beer smith when going from pellet to whole hop.  This number is adjustable in the options box, under the bitterness tab.  This would be a hard number to guess though.  The AAU's in pellets would be the same as it would in it's whole form, the difference comes from the utilization factor.  Less of the oil is rinsed from the whole as compared to the pellet.

I would think home grown hops are almost always going to be lower in AAU's do to the fact that you cant care for the hops like the professionals.
 
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