Can You Brew it Recipes - Scaling

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scottland

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So today I was listening to the Matt Brylindson interview on Can You Brew It, and jotted down the numbers they use for hopping on Union Jack. They have a 50BBL brew house, and use:

14.5lbs Warrior @ 90min
20lbs 50/50 blend Cascade/Centennial @ 30
60lbs 50/50 blend Cascade/Centennial @ Flameout (whirlpool)

Now if you directly convert that down to 6 gallons, you get the exact recipe CYBI posted for Union jack. Literally to the gram.

So what, right? Well everything I've ever heard, ever, from every pro brewer......ever is that hop utilization goes up considerably as the brewhouse gets bigger. And I do mean considerably. It varies from kettle to kettle, and brewhouse to brewhouse, but typically when scaling a 5-6 gallon batch to a 7-10BBL brewhouse, hop utilization goes up 2-3 fold. Yes, two to three times as much utilization. From 10BBL to 50-100BBL, it goes up quite a bit again. 1-2 fold.

So why does the CYBI crew scale the recipe directly down without adjusting the hopping to get the bitterness right. Their argument would be simply that the beer was cloned, but I just can't see how.

They recommend using:
1oz Warrior @ 90min
1.3oz Cascade/Centennial @ 30
3.84oz Cascade/Centennial @ Flameout

My math says that needs to be around 3oz Warrior at 90 to get the same effect, and having tasted Union Jack (a very bitter beer), my experience seems to say the same.

Thoughts?
 
To re-iterate the point, I've found this to be a trend with clone recipes from BYO and other sources. For example: I found the BYO Dogfish Head 60 and 90 minute recipes to be laughably under-hopped. I brewed a clone using about 1.5 times the hops, and found it to be much closer. I'm considering bumping that percentage to 2 times, but we'll see.

My point being, why do home brewed clone recipes simply use scaled down commercial hopping rates when we know that hop utilization changes so much?
 
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