NunoAraujo

Recipes 

Hey everyone, you probably know this chart already:

http://hopschart.com/zoom.html

Since my LHBS doesn't have a great variety of hops it would be useful for me to have a quick reference guide to hops substitution, so I decided to make my own based on this chart, since most hops subs charts I find don't specify if the substitutes suggested are for bittering or aroma. This chart is pretty useful in that way, but it isn't clear to me how to interpret it. For example, in the aroma section, are those percentages in w/w? And for humulene in the apollo hops for example, is the percentage really 1.35 or 1.35 minus 0.8? Because if it was 1.35, then it would mean that farnesene and other oils comprise most of the oil percentage, while myrcene comprises the least, right?

Thanks in advance for your help, I'm a bit confused about this...I'll post what I found out when I have all the info I need.

NunoAraujo

Recipes 

Sorry, had to bump this, no views at all...

twalte

Recipes 

Subscribed...interested as well

__________________
"You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer"
- Frank Zappa

tmoney645

Recipes 

Try this chart, it lists possible substitutions for a large variety of hops and does so in a much clearer way.

Hops Chart

NunoAraujo

Recipes 

Nice chart, very comprehensive, thanks!

But still, I'd like to understand that first chart so I can use a hierarchical clustering algorithm to group hops varieties according to aromatic and bittering properties, and make some nice and easy to understand graphs to see which hops are more closely related. Thought it would be interesting

bobot

Recipes 

That's a good chart. There is no substitute for simcoe!

Rideandbrew

Recipes 

New headline... "Jessica Alba nude pics"

wdevauld

Recipes 

I'm cross referencing data found on the web and I can't make this work out.

I started with http://beerlegends.com/chemistry-of-hops-and-alpha-acids

I looked at Apollo to see if I could make the numbers work, mainly because they were right next to the scale. I believe the percentages on the top, are subtractive like you said, in that you take the levels from each other. On the bottom scale, Apollo has their range going from 15% to 19%. So, from the website above:


Myrcene is listed as '33% - 55% of Total Oil'
So if we take 0.15 * 0.55 ~= 0.08 (This is 1/10 what is on the chart). Subtractive or not, this one should work out.

Now checking Humulene is listed as '20% of Total Oil' so time we'll try 0.19 (the high range) with 0.2 to get 0.038 (which is about 1/10 of well.... nowhere near the 0.55 listed in the chart!!!) It is even further way from the 1.35 if you go straight to the level indicated


Now checking Caryophyllene is listed as '14% - 20% of Total Oil'
So if we take 0.15 * 0.20 ~= 0.03 (this is 1/10 of the 1.7 - 1.4ish on the chart). So subtraction seems more likely.

I did a read on some academic references which lead to say: Some of the principle oils of the H. lupulus (making up roughly 60-80% of the oils in some varieties). This would make me believe that the oil percentages on the top are not quite right.

I pulled out Daniel's 'Designing Great Beers' as a tie breaker. Unfortunately Apollo is not in his tables, but Czech Saaz is! The ratios there are:
Myrcene 22.5
Humulene 42.5
Caryophyllene 11.0
Farnesene 13.0
Other 10.0
These are all listed as 'Percentage of Total Oil'. He further details how the ratios of the oils (ie: Humulene to Myrcene or Humulene to Caryophyllene) are important for the brewing process although he doesn't go so far as to say that you can substitute ones that have similar ratios.

So if you look at the Saaz in the chart you can see the Humulene is about half the total bar, and if you take the alpha acid to be 4 then the subtractive bar (3.5 minus 1.3ish or 2.2ish) is close to in line with Daniels predictions.

In short: I think the subtractive method you detailed in your original post is most likely correct, and give you the ratios of the percentages of the bars on the bottom of the chart. If that was the case, however; you'd expect that the bars on the top and the bottom would be roughly the same size, which doesn't explain Galena and Perle.

I think I've uncovered another 'I didn't know how much I didn't know about brewing' area.

NunoAraujo

Recipes 

I think I'll actually work with that beerlegends chart (for aromas at least), thanks for that. My concern in doing this was mainly because of the cohumulone content when substituting bittering hops. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I read somewhere here that, when choosing a bittering hop sub, the cohumulone content matters, right? Meaning you can't just choose any other variety and adjust the quantity to obtain the same IBUs.
Homebrewing is a pretty new thing for me, so I probably still have a few misconceptions...

I think I got it, just divide the percentage of each individual oil by the percentage of total oil:

for Apollo

Total Oil: 2 g / 100 g hops

Myrcene: 0.8 g/ 100 g hops Total Oil % = 0.8/2*100= 40% (within the 33-55% range)

Humulene: (1.35-0.8)g / 100g hops Total Oil % = 27.5% (just a bit outside the 20% range)

Caryophyllene: T.O.% = 17.5% (within 14-20% range)

And the % in the beerlegends chart is in v/v, not w/w, so there might be some deviations due to differences in densities.

Thanks wdevauld for all the trouble you went through!

When I have the time I'll do that sub chart and post it here.