Pardon the noob question, but I'm working on my first brew and trying to learn a little of the science behind what I'm doing. So, here's what I have going on.
I'm a week into my cream ale. It's the extract kit from midwest. The original recipe calls for 1 oz cascade at 60 min and 1 oz cascade at 2 min. Target OG and FG is 1.044ish and 1.011ish respectively. IBUs should be around 33. It also calls for a 2 gallon boil. Both cascades were 7.1%.
I did a few things differently. I did a 4.5 gallon boil for one. Since I knew from my reading I'd get better hop utilization with more water I only added 0.9 oz at 60 min. Then for the last 3 minute hops I put in about 1.1 oz. This was all just a guesstimate off the top of my head since I wasn't aware of the various calculators.
Anyway, since it's been a week I decided to begin taking gravity readings yesterday. It's sitting right about 1.010. Checked again today and it said the same. I'm going to check again tomorrow and if still unchanged I'm going to rack to secondary so I can start on another batch. I'd normally just leave it in the bucket but I'm anxious to start getting my pipeline going and don't want to bother using a carboy as a primary at the moment.
Regardless, I decided to taste the beer so far today. First, I have to say it was absolutely fantastic tasting even at such a young age. Slightly malty, amazing hop aroma, but a very balanced bitterness. Not exactly what I expected for something with 33 IBUs and a starting gravity of only 1.042.
Now my question stemmed from reading this chart:
According to this, my beer should be extra hoppy. I didn't get that at all. So, now that I have beer smith installed I plugged in my numbers to see how close I was to the target IBU. It wasn't bad and calculated like 28.4. That should still be in the extra hoppy category. A bit confused, I ran the numbers for the original recipe including hop schedule and smaller boil volume. That came up with a IBU of 17.5! Of course that falls in the well-balanced category which is exactly how it tasted to me. But the recipe sheet for those directions state 33 IBUs.
So now I'm completely confused. Given my recipe I should be just shy of 30 IBUs and it should be quite hoppy. But looking at the given recipe, either it's a misprint showing a target of 33 IBUs when beer smith says it should only be 17.5.
And that leads me to my final part of the question about conditioning. Will the bitterness become stronger over the next 5 or 6 weeks before drinking? Since it's so young now I know the overall flavor is nowhere near the final product but I assumed the level of bitterness given the OG/IBU scale would still show through. Then again, after running all of the numbers in beer smith between the two recipes I don't even know what to believe.
Sorry for the long question. I'm just trying to get a handle on the math and to better understand what I'm tasting so I can know what to expect with recipes going forward. Thanks for all the help so far. Either way it seems like it's going to be a fantastic brew either way, but I just want to know what's going on behind the scenes.
I'm a week into my cream ale. It's the extract kit from midwest. The original recipe calls for 1 oz cascade at 60 min and 1 oz cascade at 2 min. Target OG and FG is 1.044ish and 1.011ish respectively. IBUs should be around 33. It also calls for a 2 gallon boil. Both cascades were 7.1%.
I did a few things differently. I did a 4.5 gallon boil for one. Since I knew from my reading I'd get better hop utilization with more water I only added 0.9 oz at 60 min. Then for the last 3 minute hops I put in about 1.1 oz. This was all just a guesstimate off the top of my head since I wasn't aware of the various calculators.
Anyway, since it's been a week I decided to begin taking gravity readings yesterday. It's sitting right about 1.010. Checked again today and it said the same. I'm going to check again tomorrow and if still unchanged I'm going to rack to secondary so I can start on another batch. I'd normally just leave it in the bucket but I'm anxious to start getting my pipeline going and don't want to bother using a carboy as a primary at the moment.
Regardless, I decided to taste the beer so far today. First, I have to say it was absolutely fantastic tasting even at such a young age. Slightly malty, amazing hop aroma, but a very balanced bitterness. Not exactly what I expected for something with 33 IBUs and a starting gravity of only 1.042.
Now my question stemmed from reading this chart:
According to this, my beer should be extra hoppy. I didn't get that at all. So, now that I have beer smith installed I plugged in my numbers to see how close I was to the target IBU. It wasn't bad and calculated like 28.4. That should still be in the extra hoppy category. A bit confused, I ran the numbers for the original recipe including hop schedule and smaller boil volume. That came up with a IBU of 17.5! Of course that falls in the well-balanced category which is exactly how it tasted to me. But the recipe sheet for those directions state 33 IBUs.
So now I'm completely confused. Given my recipe I should be just shy of 30 IBUs and it should be quite hoppy. But looking at the given recipe, either it's a misprint showing a target of 33 IBUs when beer smith says it should only be 17.5.
And that leads me to my final part of the question about conditioning. Will the bitterness become stronger over the next 5 or 6 weeks before drinking? Since it's so young now I know the overall flavor is nowhere near the final product but I assumed the level of bitterness given the OG/IBU scale would still show through. Then again, after running all of the numbers in beer smith between the two recipes I don't even know what to believe.
Sorry for the long question. I'm just trying to get a handle on the math and to better understand what I'm tasting so I can know what to expect with recipes going forward. Thanks for all the help so far. Either way it seems like it's going to be a fantastic brew either way, but I just want to know what's going on behind the scenes.