Adjusting hop quantities

[ElVirolo]

Hello everyone,

I seem to have problems when adapting a recipe I found on the Internet to my own hops. In a nutshell, my issue concerns alpha acids: what should I do when my hops' AA's a different from those that the recipe uses?

What I've been doing so far was scaling bittering hops' quantities as such: recipe alpha * recipe quantity = my alpha * my quantity. Is this the right way to proceed? Should I be using IBU formulas instead?

From what I've read, I don't need to be doing that for "15 minutes" aroma hops, as this process depends on oils rather than AA's. I usually just use the quantity of hops specified in the recipe. Is that correct?

Many thanks,

EV.

 

[hogwash]

The way you're doing it is fine. I adjust for any hop addition during the boil but use the same amounts as the recipe for flameout and dry hops.

 

[ElVirolo]

Great, thanks a lot!

 

[campbelldm1]

Are you using beersmith? You should be able to adjust the aa when you select the hop variety. I have had to do this as well. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1421924701.345006.jpg

THis is what it looks like on the iPad but I know there is an option on the PC also

 

[ElVirolo]

I do - sometimes - use BS (the desktop version). I tried doing what you said but it seems the software does change the AA percentage, but doesn't change the amount of hops accordingly. Am I doing something wrong?

 

[hogwash]

As far as I can tell, Beersmith won't change the quantity. You have to do it yourself and just match ibus.

 

[ElVirolo]

That's what I thought. Thanks for your reply!

 

[campbelldm1]

If you click on the IBU slider you can change the value and it should change quantities View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1422875572.541524.jpg

 

[ElVirolo]

Brilliant! Seems to work on the desktop version too. What I did was manually change the bittering hop amount to reach the desired number of IBU's, but your solution is even better!

 

[hogwash]

That tool will change every hop quantity in the recipe. So if you have a recipe that uses three hop varieties but only one of the hop varieties is different in AA% than what is in the recipe and you use that tool, it will scale all of them to match the desired IBUs and not just the one that has a different AA%. Make sense? I guess it depends on how picky you want to be because it probably won't make a hug difference in the final product unless the AA%s are very different. I'm kind of picky that way.

 

[campbelldm1]

Makes sense. I guess if you just want to get a specific ibu from a 60 minute addition it would be useful. Of course it would also highlight laziness and not just wanting to play around with the number manually.