Beersmith and IBUs/HBUs

After finally purchasing Beersmith I put in a recipie for an IPA that I'm planning on making in a week or so and according to the estimated IBU's I'm way under the style IBU's. I got the recipe out of "Beer Captured" and it sounds about right. I put in another IPA recipe out of "Beer Captured" and I came up with the same under hopped solution.

Has anybody had similar experiences where BeerSmith estimates the IBUs/HBUs to be too low for the particular style/recipe? I adjusted the boil volume for my particular kettle and ensured the AA% matched what the "Beer captured" recipes called for; am I missing anything else?

Thanks
KB

Did you choose extract/partial/all-grain? It makes a difference in hop utilization.

What is the recipe

I suspect that the book is using a different IBU formula than beersmith. I believe Beersmith uses the Tinseth formula by default but you can change it. I don't think I've ever seen a book publish which formula they were using, so you can keep changing it in beersmith till it matches up. Really though its best to stick with just one formula and get to know the results based on that formula.

Bokonon said:

I suspect that the book is using a different IBU formula than beersmith. I believe Beersmith uses the Tinseth formula by default but you can change it. I don't think I've ever seen a book publish which formula they were using, so you can keep changing it in beersmith till it matches up. Really though its best to stick with just one formula and get to know the results based on that formula.

Click to expand...

I agree to everything on here.

IIRC someone posted the same question about beer captured or another book's recipes, and they changed Beersmith's default to one of the other options and the recipe did end up matching dead on...

And yeah, you want to stick to the recipe in the book if you want the clone to be a close or exact copy of the beer...they put a lot of effort into getting their clone recipes to work...I heard an interview with them about how they work...and it sounds like they learned so much from the first book, and had gotten a reputation with the commercial breweries, that when the second book was being put together they got a LOT of help from the original breweries, plus had learned so much, the it sounds like the second book in a lot of ways is even better thant the first.