Pellets vs leaf hops

Looking to buy some ingredients for my next brew and am piecing this one together. Full leaf hops or pellets? One better than the other? I've only ever used pellets

I like whole leaf as long as they're fresh. I like to use pellets for bittering and whole leaf the rest if the way. If the recipe is using pellets and you're using leaf I would up the hops 50%. Im not sure about your lhbs but mine carries very few whole leaf hops.

I think you can use them interchangeably. I think I've only noticed a big difference when dry hopping. I really like whole leaf since they are easy to remove and I enjoy the aromatics I've gotten out of them more than with pellet.

some people say whole leaf gives a fresher flavor/ aroma / better utilization. I usually go with whats available.

whole leaf is great for the brewing process as they can easily be filtered out of the wort and don't create the sludge like pellets do. If I can get whole leaf of the variety I'm looking for, I'll always go for them.

Pellets are more convenient - but I still use whole hops for dry hopping in the keg.

I personally use all whole leaf hops. Mainly because I just prefer unprocessed ingredients whenever possible. Secondarily, because my set up was created with leaf hops in mind, pellets leave me with a clogged mess.

FWIW, pellets give a few percentage better utilization over leaf, so assuming the same weight and AA%, the pellet beer would be a touch more bitter. Flavor and aroma are obviously much more subjective to personal preference.

I don't use whole leaf very much, but what's the ratio? Is it one for one?

A lot of people say 1:1 but every time Ive used while hops when the recipe is based on pellets it seems to not be bittered enough

Not to highjack this thread, but I have a recipe that calls for .2g/l of hops. What is this amount?

Bulls Beers said:

I don't use whole leaf very much, but what's the ratio? Is it one for one?

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Per Randy Kosher in "Radical Brewing" pellets yield about 25% more ibus than whole hops. That matches fairly well with whats I've read elsewhere. You could play around with some software and see how the numbers change also. Consider hopville.com if you don't want to buy software. I build all my beers with it.

Not to highjack this thread, but I have a recipe that calls for .2g/l of hops. What is this amount?

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.2 grams per liter?

Bulls Beers said:

Not to highjack this thread, but I have a recipe that calls for .2g/l of hops. What is this amount?

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Scale it to your recipe size... A 5 gallon batch is about 19L so .2*19=3.8g (which seems like a really tiny addition)

Jbear said:

Per Randy Kosher in "Radical Brewing" pellets yield about 25% more ibus than whole hops. That matches fairly well with whats I've read elsewhere. You could play around with some software and see how the numbers change also. Consider hopville.com if you don't want to buy software. I build all my beers with it.

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And that's Randy Mosher. Gotta love mobile autocorrect

Jbear said:

Scale it to your recipe size... A 5 gallon batch is about 19L so .2*19=3.8g (which seems like a really tiny addition)

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Yeah, that is a small amount. It's a Helles recipe and that's what it's calling for, in three separate additions. That can't be right. I'm gonna throw the numbers in beersmith. The style is between 16-22 ibus. I'm probably gonna bump up those hop additions.