Can you taste a 2 ibu difference?

I tried to rebrew an ipa I've made previously, yesterday. Just realized I forgot to adjust my alpha acid difference from my hops the first time I brewed to this time. After calculating I have realized my ibu's have gone from 50 to 52. Will I even be able to taste this difference?

I seriously doubt it.

I've always heard the taste thresehold is ~5 IBUs (in a controlled setting, i.e. a blind tasting). 2 IBUs is well within homebrew tolerances!

Honestly I am not so sure you could taste a difference until you get at about an 8-10 IBU difference and that's if you are seriously in tune with how that beer should taste. If you haven't drank it in a couple weeks or months you will not know the difference.

the_bird said:

I've always heard the taste thresehold is ~5 IBUs (in a controlled setting, i.e. a blind tasting). 2 IBUs is well within homebrew tolerances!

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I've heard that too, and that makes sense.

I also think it depends on the beer. In a 10 IBU beer, then yes, I'd say 5 IBUs would be discernable. But in a 40+ IBU beer, there would be no way to be able to tell the difference in a 2 IBU difference!

Keep in mind too that aged hops may lose some of their alpha acids, so even if the beer calculated out to exactly the same it would probably be impossible for that to happen if the hops were a month older.

Thank you everyone!

Also, just because you calculate a 2 IBU difference does not mean that there actually is a 2 IBU difference...the formulas are just estimates; there are so many factors at work and 2 IBU is well within our margin of error.

I can... You can't.

Just kidding, I don't think anyone can. Yooper and TyTanium gave you some good info.

I think the human threshold for detecting changes in many many things (weight, light, etc) is 10%. Probably pretty similar for this.