IBUs , how much is too much ?

Just curious as to what people's thresholds are to bitter beers.
Tried some commercial craft beers (Dogfishhead 60, SN torpedo, Sebago and Long Trail sick day IPAs )that were up there in IBUs say in the
60-80 IBU range and figure thats about all the bitterness I can tolerate.
My latest homebrew was a Morebeer M-80 IPA kit topping out at est 75-80 IBUs and has some pucker to it.
Can't imagine going any higher but maybe some would.
Whats your tolerance to bitter ?

The IBUs don't really matter. I mean, they do, but only in the sense of the OG/IBU ratio.

For example, say we have a beer that is 15 IBUs. That would be fine in a cream ale, with an OG of 1.040. That's an IBU/SG ratio of .337.

But say you had a barleywine with an OG of 1.090. If you only had 15 IBUs to balance that sweetness in such a high OG, the beer would be undrinkably sweet with an IBU/SG ratio of .170 or thereabouts.

So, what needs to be compared is the balance. 50 IBUs in a 1.040 beer might be quite bitter, with a 1.250 ratio, but 50 IBUs in a 1.070 beer is reasonable.

Pliny the Elder, arguably one of the favorite US double IPAs in the country calculates out to something like 200+ IBUs- but because hops oils are only so soluable that is a theorized amount. Tests show that it's more like 85 IBUs. In any case, sure, it's bitter but because it's so hoppy and quaffable, it doesn't have an intense bitterness to it like you'd expect.

I don't love intense bitterness in an IPA, unless it is balanced by big aroma hops and flavor hops. A bitter IPA that I do love is Fathead's "Headhunter" IPA. It's firmly bitter, but it's got intense hops flavor and aroma that really overcomes that bitterness.

It really depends on the beer. I've had a few IPAs that are just so unbalanced towards bitter and without flavor that I don't like them.

Thanks for explaining the balance part of it yooper.
Guess that is what i was trying to get at, bitterness and flavor happiness.

Subjective. Balance it.

Yoopers explanation about BU:GU ratio is a very good guideline.

Hops and bitterness is not the whole picture. You can brew a beer with fairly low bitterness but huge hop flavor and aroma, by adding a small amount of hops to bitter and a lot of hops near the end of the boil. I am not a big fan of tooth enamel stripping bitterness, but do love hops. So, I often brew beers that have a small bittering addition and then add a lot of hops in the last 15 minutes of the boil. Big flavor and aroma but not very bitter. YUM.

BierMuncher has a chart that shows Yooper's description visually. I use it to keep my beers balanced.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/biermuncher-your-gravity-hops-ratio-graphs-43530/


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Yoopers post nails it. To me hoppy beer is no different than spicy food. I love some good heat in food, but if it's just hot for the sake of being hot, it's no good. There needs to be balance.

After drinking IPAs for a while there is no such thing as too bitter. It either is or isnt. Yooper has the best advice...60 IBU can seem really different depending on how dry the brew is. A lot of people don't think about the body when considering bitterness and it is the most important factor to how bitter a beer seems.

Not exactly on topic, but i dont think any brewing software calculates IBUs correctly. I use brewsmith and it seems to treat early and late additions the same as far as its IBU estimate goes. Anybody know about this for sure?

Personal preference? I stop my hoppy brews at calculated 60 maybe 70 IBU. I use fermenter additions of simple sugars near the end of high krausen to really drive that final gravity down to the 1.010-1.013 ranges. Even 40IBU will seem bitter in a very dry finishing beer. Finish it dry and you can use more hops in whirlpool additions and 40-60 IBU is all you need (sometimes, if I make an American barleywine I would definitely shoot for that 90IBU range and try to make it finish sweet).

To add to what Yooper said, it also varies by hop type. IBU technically doesn't measure actual bitterness, but alpha acids dissolved into the beer; the thing is that alpha acids aren't the only thing that affects beer bitterness from hops. Hops, after all, provide more than just alpha acid, there's a variety of acids and oils extracted from hops when you boil them or dry hop them. Some hops, even though they have higher alpha acid content (and therefore theoretically are more bitter) than others might create a much smoother flavor than just a mouth full of bitterness or pine. Nelson Sauvin, for example, has alpha acid content somewhere in the low teens, but (in my opinion, at least) it provides a much less bitter flavor than a hop with a similar acid content like say, Sorachi Ace.

Personally, I don't worry about IBU, outside of competition entries, I calculate it for reference and compare the IBU/GU balance between beers out of curiosity, but it's not a major factor in deciding how I build my beers as much as hop variety decisions are.