BJCP guidelines and IBU calculations...

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zing

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So... This is likely the wrong section of he forum to ask this, but... Here goes:

I'm about to enter my first beer into a BJCP sanctioned competition, an APA. The beer is delicious... All that've tried it agree... Even non-beer drinkers. It is by no means a bitter beer, but by tinseth and rager formulas, the beer sits well above the guideline IBU count. I know that the submision form basically gets the recipe. The question I guess I'm leading up to is: even though calculated IBUs are well outside the specified range, will this beer be judged by the math or by its flavor?

I have read a couple posts about an alternate version of tinseth that better describes constant hop additions (I add sequentionally in my boil every 10 minutes from 30 on) which may help my calculations, but most importantly, like I said earlier, the beer is only bitter enough to be balanced. It definitely is a pale ale--not an IPA--in flavor, but again, the business of IBUs worries me entering it into competition.

Thanks for the help!
If this belongs in a different section of the forum, please let me know and I'll move it.

Thanks again
 
It'll be judged by its flavor. The numbers don't really enter into it.
 
Thanks for the very quick response! I've brewed two versions for the competition, one slightly more hoppy than the other. The hoppier one was done first, and is fault free and delicious. The other, brewed to my normal recipe will bottle too close to the entry date to be carbonated enough to try before entering it. So... Since only one entry is allowed... Thanks to you, I can confidently enter the one that I already know is good, even if tinseth says it's 73 IBUs... Which anyone with any beer knowledge knows is nearly double the set parameters for an American pale...
 
IBUs are perspective taste wise. If the malt bill balances it out go for it. I try to brew my beers for comps in the upper end of the IBU range to make up for the hop fatigue that can happen when judging hop forward beers like IPAs and such
 
I've only judged two competitions, but recipes were not submitted in either. If the bittering dominates the beer, that would be a problem.
 
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