Wait, how bitter?

Just about to start my RIS, and my IBU calcs are coming out waaay different than the recipe suggests it will be. Recipe says 66 IBU. Here's the schedule:

1.5 oz Columbus 14.4 AA @ 60 min
1.5 oz Centennial 10.3 AA @ 60 min

1 oz Columbus 14.4 AA @ 15 min

.5 oz Columbus 14.4 AA @ 5 min

I'm calculating 150ish IBUs...

Huh?

Need to know your batch size to calculate.

Seems like an aweful lot of hops in the first stage of the boil...FWIW I usually only add an ounce or so at 60 and progressively more towards the end. But I prefer aroma and flavor over bitterness qualities.

Sorry, boil size is 3 gal, and batch is 5.

evanos said:

Sorry, boil size is 3 gal, and batch is 5.

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You should calc IBUs based on final volume. 3oz bittering with those hops is HUGE bitterness though. Too much.

Well, what's weird is that it's a kit beer from the LHBS that calls for 2.5 oz Columbus at 60 minutes. They shorted me an ounce, so I subbed in 1.5 oz of Centennial. Either way, I can tell the bitterness is gonna be intense just from tasting the wort. I honestly don't think it tasted that bad... we'll see though.

ryandlf said:

Seems like an aweful lot of hops in the first stage of the boil...FWIW I usually only add an ounce or so at 60 and progressively more towards the end. But I prefer aroma and flavor over bitterness qualities.

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Right. But he's brewing a Russian Imperial. When was the last time you had an RIS with a lot of hop aroma and flavor?

So it is correct to pretty much just have a bittering addition. While 66 IBUs may sound like a lot, it's really not when taking into account the gravity of this beer. You really need some strong bitterness to balance out the sweetness.

evanos said:

Well, what's weird is that it's a kit beer from the LHBS that calls for 2.5 oz Columbus at 60 minutes. They shorted me an ounce, so I subbed in 1.5 oz of Centennial. Either way, I can tell the bitterness is gonna be intense just from tasting the wort. I honestly don't think it tasted that bad... we'll see though.

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The bitterness won't be intense.

Keep in mind that a beer of this size NEEDS AGE!!! It will be at least six months in the bottle before it's really at it's prime. In that time the bitterness will drop out significantly.

I big beer needs a generous amount of hops since it will be sitting, but be careful; an RIS is not known for being hoppy! (Although I made something very similar to a RIS with lots of Cascade and it was VERY tasty!)

I know that the hops will mellow out with age, and that a RIS should be pretty bitter to balance the malts. My problem is that the recipe says 66 IBU (nothing crazy, I think Stone's RIS is like 100). But what I can't figure out is why the recipe says 66 IBU and my calculations (done online) come up at 150ish. In any case, tasting the wort calmed my worries quite a bit. I think it's gonna be quite an interesting beer.

Are you doing a full boil, and if so is the recipe written up that way? If you're not doing a full boil, are you adding any of the extract late? The people designing the recipe might have assumed you were boiling one way (partial boil, all the extract), where if you're doing it another way it would throw off your calculations.

For what its worth, I brewed a RIS about a year ago with 80 IBUs. After fermenting for 3 months and letting it age in a keg for 6 months, you can't tell there are nearly that many IBUs in there. Some of that is going to be due to decreased bitterness with age, and some of that is going to be due to the fact that with the amount of dark malts you've probably got, you might wind up with an FG around 1.025-1.03, so you're gonna need some bitterness to balance that out.

It's an extract partial boil with early addition of extract (per the recipe).

evanos said:

Well, what's weird is that it's a kit beer from the LHBS that calls for 2.5 oz Columbus at 60 minutes. They shorted me an ounce, so I subbed in 1.5 oz of Centennial.

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Could it means 2.5 oz total of Columbus, meaning you shouldn't have added 1.5 oz more (of Centennial in your case) @60 min.

Sound like a typo to me. 150 IBU in an RIS? That's gonna be intense. 66, while it sounds high, is a decent balance and will mellow with age.

SterlingHopper said:

Could it means 2.5 oz total of Columbus, meaning you shouldn't have added 1.5 oz more (of Centennial in your case) @60 min.

Sound like a typo to me. 150 IBU in an RIS? That's gonna be intense. 66, while it sounds high, is a decent balance and will mellow with age.

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The way the recipe is written is such (paraphrasing a bit)

Ingredients:
Malt extract and grains and whatnot (etc.)
2.5 oz Columbus hops (bittering)
1 oz Columbus hops (flavor)
.5 oz Columbus hops (aroma)

Directions:
Steep grains.
Boil the solution. Take off boil and add fermentables (all of them).
Bring to boil and add bittering hops. Boil for 45 minutes.
After 45 minutes, add flavoring hops. Boil for another 10 minutes.
After the additional 10 minutes, add the aroma hops. Boil for 5 minutes. Flame out, chill, pitch, etc.

So, from what I'm gathering, that means:

2.5 oz Columbus @ 60 minutes
1 oz Columbus @ 15 minutes
.5 oz Columbus @ 5 minutes

All the hops were 14.4% AA. Again, I'm not too worried about the beer being too bitter, I just still can't figure out why the IBU's would be so off. The IBU calculator I tried is here: http://www.rooftopbrew.net/ibu.php

AHA! I just tried a different calculator (http://www.brewersfriend.com/ibu-calculator/) that seems to better account for the wort gravity. Came up at 55ish IBUs. Still weird though. I should probably just ask the LHBS how the heck the calculated the IBUs, lol...

If you put all of your fermentables into a partial boil, you aren't gonna get as good utilization of the hops. For example, if the final gravity of a 5 gallon batch is 1.080 and you boil all of the fermentables in a 3 gallon boil, then your boil gravity will be 80*5/3 -> 1.133, making your 60 min. utilization, like, 0.11 (extrapolating from the chart in How to Brew by Palmer). That's pretty crummy and about half the utilization of a 1.055 boil.

This is why I add my malt extracts at the end of the boil in my partial mash batches. I don't want to have to buy double hops for the same IBUs. With a high gravity extract kit, you could save half of the extract to add in the last 5 or 10 minutes of the boil (just long enough to pasteurize it), to get a lower boil gravity.

SterlingHopper said:

This is why I add my malt extracts at the end of the boil in my partial mash batches. I don't want to have to buy double hops for the same IBUs. With a high gravity extract kit, you could save half of the extract to add in the last 5 or 10 minutes of the boil (just long enough to pasteurize it), to get a lower boil gravity.

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Yeah, if I were to be putting together my own ingredients, I'd be more inclined to consider the gravity's effect on hop utilization. But, this was a kit put together by the brewshop, and so I can't change the boil format and change the amount of hops I'm gonna get with the kit.

Buttt, I appreciate the mention considering gravity. I'll definitely keep it in mind if I'm designing a recipe myself.