Hop Utilisation %

What does the 100% actually represent in the hop utilisation factor.

As far as I knew, you can only get so much AA out of the hops and that is normally a lot lower than 100%.

For larger 20gallon batches, how can you get over 100% utilisation as 100% is...we...100%?

Confused!

These comments are general and pertain not just to Beersmith:

The 100% utilisation is based on accepted figures for smaller brews up to a reasonable volume. It is a factor by which you can adjust up or down the percieved or measured bitterness of your beer.
Let's say a small system returns 100 ibu for 100 gms of hops boiled for 60 minutes = the 100% means you are achieving the "accepted expected" return from your system. However for some reason your small system may consistently give with the 100gms, 110ibus in the 60 minutes. There are two main factors that can "increase" your utilisation - Time and Temperature.

Two examples. An immersion chiller and the whirlpool and counter flow chiller method. With the immersion chiller the wort as a whole is cooled to a point quickly where bitterness is no longer extracted from the hops whereas the CFC rapidly cools a small amount of the wort while the remainder can sit for an extended time as the wort is cooled. The immersion chiller for this example gives 100% and the CFC possibly 10% more extracted bitterness for the same hops.

If you percieve your beer is consistently 110 ibus try setting the utilisation factor to 110% this will account [should] for the extra bitterness you achieve with your system.The utilisation % is a factor to allow you to fine tune how your system deals with bitterness over the full wort process. The higher the utilisation % you set the lower the gm weight of hops you will enter to give percieved IBU's you want for your beer. It is a very useful and versatile tool. On the other side of the coin if you feel with your equipment your beers are consistently under bittered you can reduce the utilisation % which will cause BS2 to basically ask you for more hops to achieve your percieved bittering levels.

Steve

Thanks Steve, that makes it clearer.

Reason I asked was to do with the common idea that you only get so much out of the hops i.e. 35% bitterness, so I was thinking along those percentages.
So 100% seemed odd to me.

One other thing, why does the percentage go up when you scale a recipe past 20 Gallons?

Dave

Kettle volume has a significant impact on hop utilisation. The increase in % utilisation [bitterness extracted based on the same amount of hops] increases as the kettle volume increases. It is surprising how small an amount of hops is required relative to the kettle volume with larger kettles. As with all adjustable tools, the brewer is responsible to determine the % factor he needs for the brewery in question. I hope that sought of makes sense.

Cheers.

Still don't get why the hop utilisation factor is 100%?
Most literature suggests a maximum hop utilisation of 35% in the copper/kettle.

How does the BeerSmith 100% figure match up, what is the maths behind it?

Hi,
  The hop utilization factor for equipment is not the same as utilization in the boil.  In the equipment profile it is really just a number to adjust for really large brewing systems (greater than 20 gallons - typically microbrews) that get high utilization.  Its normalized to 100% for home brewing, but if you own a microbrewery you might get much higher setting.  You can think of this more as a scaling factor used by really large breweries.  It should be 100% unless you are working with more than 20 gallons.

  Hop utilization in the boil is estimated using the various equations (tinseth, rager, etc) and as you point out is actually much lower.  The program takes care of this separately using the hop IBU equations.

Brad

Ah, my misunderstanding.

Thanks Brad.

I am looking to use BeerSmith in a microbrewery setup (4bbl) so just trying to get all the equations and equipment setup correctly.

Thanks again all,
Dave

Thanks Brad for your clearer explanation.

Steve

Can someone please help me, I dont know how to set the hop utilization factor for my equipment. My boil size is 120,24 liters and for now I'm using the default 100% factor. I read that the factor should go up if batches are bigger then 75 liters, so it's possible that I should use a bigger factor.

There is no formula for setting hop utilization factors.  You may get better utilization out of your particular system, but unless you send samples for measurement there is no way of being accurate in adjustment.

My recommendation is to leave the factor where it is, make a couple of brews and then go find some commercial examples where the IBU rating matches  and surrounds what you brewed according to the software.  Now do a tasting and match up your beer to one that seems to have a similar bitterness.  Repeat this a couple of times with different recipes and you have some idea of how to adjust the calculated IBU to match what is in the marketplace and has hopefully a tested value.

You can then decide if you want to alter the utilization factor to match those values or just adjust your targets up or down based upon your experiences.

rcabarreto said:

Can someone please help me, I dont know how to set the hop utilization factor for my equipment. My boil size is 120,24 liters and for now I'm using the default 100% factor. I read that the factor should go up if batches are bigger then 75 liters, so it's possible that I should use a bigger factor.

Click to expand...

As Oginme pointed out, leaving the utilization factor at 100% is the best place to start.

The utilization factor is really your adjustment of whichever IBU calculation you choose. All three will have different results from each other, so you should start by picking the one that you trust.