IBU calculation help

Wondering if someone could help me out with an IBU calculation. I went a little mad scientist with my Liberty Cream ale kit and am curious what I've done

Boiling 3.5 gallons, topped off with 2 gallons. Ended up wtih 5.25 gallons in primary.

Steeped 8 oz. Carapils specialty grains for 30 min.

Added 2 lbs LME extract at 60 min
Added .25 oz Cascade(7.1% alpha acid) at 60 min
Added .25 oz Cascade at 20 min
Added 4 lbs LME extract at 10 min
Added 1 oz Cascade at 2 min

SG came to 1.043

If there's any other info needed let me know. I really need to get a beer application for my mac soon.

Thanks

Beersmith is saying 15.5 IBUs, which is towards the lower end of the style guidelines. However, with the 2 minute Cascade addition, I imagine the hop aroma is going to be off the charts in terms of the style...6A cream ale should have little to no hop aroma.

That's not necessarily a bad thing though! Unless you're entering it in a competition, I say ignore the style guidelines and brew what you want to drink.

EDIT: I didn't notice the 3.5 gallon boil volume...when I add that info to Beersmith, the IBUs drop down to 13.9!

15.5? That doesn't make sense. The Liberty Cream Ale kit I have is from Midwest and its listed at 33.4 IBU's on the instruction list. They couldn't be that far off could they? I didn't alter the recipe that much.

Kit-http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdByID.aspx?ProdID=3321

Recipe/directions-http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdByID.aspx?ProdID=3321

Did you figure in the late extract addition? From past calculations from other members here late extract additions allows less hops to be used for bittering yet there is no loss in IBU rating.

Thanks for the help

I really need to get a beer application for my mac soon.

Click to expand...

Beer Calculus . homebrew recipe calculator
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/recipe.html

Paulasaurus said:

15.5? That doesn't make sense. The Liberty Cream Ale kit I have is from Midwest and its listed at 33.4 IBU's on the instruction list. They couldn't be that far off could they? I didn't alter the recipe that much.

Kit-http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdByID.aspx?ProdID=3321

Recipe/directions-http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdByID.aspx?ProdID=3321

Did you figure in the late extract addition? From past calculations from other members here late extract additions allows less hops to be used for bittering yet there is no loss in IBU rating.

Thanks for the help

Click to expand...

I don't see the actual recipe they sent. If you post that, I can calculate it out. Adding .25 ounces of cascade for the bittering hops, though, makes an enormous reduction in bittering. That's a very little amount of bittering hops. I would think the recipe would have you adding an ounce or so, especially for a partial boil. Making it a 5.25 gallon kit instead of 5 gallons would have also reduced the IBUs.

If they sent two ounces of hops, I probably would have used them like this:

1 ounce 60 minutes
.5 ounce 15 minutes
.5 ounce 2 minutes

But, as BLL said, that wouldn't really be to style for a cream ale. I like hops, though!

Edit- Ah! I see their instructions. They sure aren't very clear! "Add .5 ounce to 1 ounce at 60 minutes" and "Add 1 ounce at 2 minutes". I'm guessing that you wanted to use the .5 ounce guidelines (less bitter) so used .25 ounces at 60 minutes, thinking that adding the extract late would make it more bitter. I would suggest for the next time, either run it through some brewing software or post it up here and we can help you adjust the hopping.

It still sounds like a really nice beer- low IBUs with a nice hop flavor. I think you'll like it alot!

Paulasaurus said:

15.5? That doesn't make sense. The Liberty Cream Ale kit I have is from Midwest and its listed at 33.4 IBU's on the instruction list. They couldn't be that far off could they? I didn't alter the recipe that much.

Kit-http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdByID.aspx?ProdID=3321

Recipe/directions-http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdByID.aspx?ProdID=3321

Did you figure in the late extract addition? From past calculations from other members here late extract additions allows less hops to be used for bittering yet there is no loss in IBU rating.

Thanks for the help

Click to expand...

Just to add to the data - I ran the recipe through BeerSnith as well and got 15 IBUs.

You were short on the 60 minute bittering addition. The recipe states .5 to 1 oz. of the Cascade for bittering.

YooperBrew was correct. I wanted to be on the low side of bittering and since I was doing a late extract addition I thought I could get away with a bit less bittering hops. Guess I went a little too less according to what everyone is saying.

Lesson learned. Was hoping to get more hop flavor out of it anyway. The airlock is smelling uber tasty

Thanks for the input everyone.

For next time, you can "guestimate" using about 20-25% less bittering hops if you're doing a late addition of the extract. This really depends on several factors, but you can be ok with that guess most of the time. Cutting by 50% is too much (especially when you're already at the low end of the range normally as in that recipe using .50 ounce), but in this case I think it'll work nicely for you!

Ya know, after reading over YooperBrew's post I might be getting IBU's confused with hop flavor.

Do IBU's directly relate to hop flavor? Can you have a very hoppy beer with low IBU's and or a lightly hopped beer with very high IBU's?

Thanks all

Paulasaurus said:

Ya know, after reading over YooperBrew's post I might be getting IBU's confused with hop flavor.

Do IBU's directly relate to hop flavor? Can you have a very hoppy beer with low IBU's and or a lightly hopped beer with very high IBU's?

Thanks all

Click to expand...

No. IBUs do NOT relate to hop flavor, as far as we think of as "hoppy" or not. It's really a measurement of the amount of bitterness. IBU stands for International Bittering Units. You can have a very low IBU beer (like you have with the cream ale at 15 IBUs) with lots of hoppy flavor from those late additions. Late additions of hops provide almost no bitterness at all, just hops flavor and aroma. The early (60 minute addition especially) hops provide very little in the way of flavor, but nearly all of the bitterness in the beer.

So, you can have a very high IBU beer with almost no hops flavor or aroma. Some beers (like stouts) are that way. Well, not very high IBUs, of course, but very little or no aroma or flavoring hops additions. Other beers aren't bitter, and have just enough IBUs to not be too sweet, but have plenty of late hops to give lots of hops aroma and flavor. Some pale ales would fall into this area.

They key to any beer, no matter the style or IBUs, is balance. The right amount of hops to offset the sweetness of the malt is a goal, no matter what the style.

Got it. Well this will be a very good experiment for me then. Give me a chance to taste a high hopped low IBU beer.

Thanks for the explanation Yooper, I understand it now and will apply the "balance" factor to my following beers.

low IBU's/big hop aroma aside, my brew closet sure smells tasty.

Now to plant that Cascade rhizome I picked up the other day

Well after thinking it over and over again I realized that the IBU's listed on the recipe sheet(33.4 IBUs) probably refered to the approx IBU possible when using the full 1oz. of bittering hops.

Therefore using .5oz. would have given me 16.7 IBU. Therefore my .25 oz bittering addition along with my late extract addition equaled out to 15 IBUs which is pretty damn close to 16.7 IBU so it worked out very very close to what I was trying to achieve.

Glad I figured this out being as I just felt a little bummed about the outcome on paper. So feeling good about my 6th batch. Getting rave reviews from friends and family thus far with my previous batches. In fact one of my friends recently picked me up a 6.5 gallon primary bucket and a 6 gallon better bottle as a gift, so now I have no choice but to fill them