Calculating IBU's with BeerSmith

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

smalltown2001

Active Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2008
Messages
42
Reaction score
0
Location
Portland, OR
So I'm curious how many people put their recipe into BeerSmith, print it out and brew and call it good, or do people type in the exact alpha acids for each hop, not the standard AA's they give you in the program, but the AA's off of the package of hops? Also, does anyone go to the hop age option in Beer Smith, and calculate the age of hops, the way they are packaged, and see how much the AA's have decreased, and then use THAT value (which is significantly lower if not using fresh hops) in calculating the IBU's for the beer. The last beer I brewed, I was trying it out, and then saw how complex it could be estimating the exact IBU's, and wondered if I should have been taking the age of hops into consideration before just throwing them in and calling it good. Any thoughts? :confused:
 
Go to Tools - Options - Bitterness, and change it to Rager or Garetz and see how completely different the numbers are. They are all just estimates, it's next to impossible to accurately estimate the amount of IBUs with any formula. Get used to one formula and how it tastes with beers you make on your system, and go from there, but the numbers are just guesses.

That said, I do change the AA% numbers, but never mess w/ the age.
 
Back
Top