BeerSmith and IBUs

[BeerSmith]

OK,
I entered the recipe as you had it listed at the top of the post above.

He did not provide the alpha content of the hops or his boil volume, but just going off the default hop entries in BeerSmith and the 7.7gal boil volume you provided I came up with 69.7 IBUs for Tinseth, vice his listing which has it as 75 IBUs. Also I used your boil/finish volumes.

Keep in mind that a small thing, like taking the Horizon hops to 14% IBU vice 12% would drive it back up to 75 IBUs.

Cheers,
Brad

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BeerSmith Recipe Printout - BeerSmith Brewing Software, Recipes, Blog, Wiki and Discussion Forum
Recipe: Imperial Honey Porter
Brewer: Saccharomyces
Asst Brewer:
Style: Robust Porter
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (35.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 5.30 gal
Boil Size: 7.43 gal
Estimated OG: 1.096 SG
Estimated Color: 28.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 69.7 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
10.00 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 55.56 %
4.00 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 22.22 %
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 5.56 %
0.50 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 2.78 %
0.50 lb Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain 2.78 %
1.00 oz Horizon [12.00 %] (60 min) Hops 34.9 IBU
1.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (45 min) Hops 22.0 IBU
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (20 min) Hops 4.8 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (15 min) Hops 7.9 IBU
2.00 lb Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 11.11 %

 

[The Pol]

OK,
I entered the recipe as you had it listed at the top of the post above.

He did not provide the alpha content of the hops or his boil volume, but just going off the default hop entries in BeerSmith and the 7.7gal boil volume you provided I came up with 69.7 IBUs for Tinseth, vice his listing which has it as 75 IBUs. Also I used your boil/finish volumes.

Keep in mind that a small thing, like taking the Horizon hops to 14% IBU vice 12% would drive it back up to 75 IBUs.

Cheers,
Brad

---------------------------------------------------
BeerSmith Recipe Printout - BeerSmith Brewing Software, Recipes, Blog, Wiki and Discussion Forum
Recipe: Imperial Honey Porter
Brewer: Saccharomyces
Asst Brewer:
Style: Robust Porter
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (35.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 5.30 gal
Boil Size: 7.43 gal
Estimated OG: 1.096 SG
Estimated Color: 28.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 69.7 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
10.00 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 55.56 %
4.00 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 22.22 %
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 5.56 %
0.50 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 2.78 %
0.50 lb Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain 2.78 %
1.00 oz Horizon [12.00 %] (60 min) Hops 34.9 IBU
1.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (45 min) Hops 22.0 IBU
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (20 min) Hops 4.8 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (15 min) Hops 7.9 IBU
2.00 lb Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 11.11 %

SORRY, my Horizon is 14.2 and my Cascade are 7.2 AA...

No matter what I do, I am getting 95 IBUs... but every other software on the market is in the 75 IBU area.

 

[avaserfi]

Using the stock Beersmith values Horizon at 12% and Cascade at 5.5% I get 71.5 IBUs Tinseth that is with a 7.43 pre-boil and 5.3 post boil. Same stuff with 14.2% Horizon and 7.2% Cascade I get 89.1 IBU Tinseth. Note: honey was included on flame out.

 

[BeerSmith]

Hi,
A minor point, but if you boil the honey for 60 min (uncheck the add after boil switch in the honey in BeerSmith - which is the default for all of the other programs) you come out with 81 IBUs for BeerSmith vice 78.8 using another program. If I matched up all of the ingredient parameters (grain potentials, equipment settings, leaf vs pellet, etc), the difference would be even smaller.

Now, personally I would not boil the honey but instead add it at flameout or even later. Boiling it strips away most of the delicate flavors - you might as well add sugar to the beer instead.

Cheers,
Brad

 

[The Pol]

Hi,
A minor point, but if you boil the honey for 60 min (uncheck the add after boil switch in the honey in BeerSmith - which is the default for all of the other programs) you come out with 81 IBUs for BeerSmith vice 78.8 using another program. If I matched up all of the ingredient parameters (grain potentials, equipment settings, leaf vs pellet, etc), the difference would be even smaller.

Now, personally I would not boil the honey but instead add it at flameout or even later. Boiling it strips away most of the delicate flavors - you might as well add sugar to the beer instead.

Cheers,
Brad

For giggles I removed the honey all together, it didnt change the IBU calc.

BTW the honey goes in at the end of the boil.

 

[Joetuo]

So did we come to a conclusion on why it is so far off??

 

[The Pol]

Nope... maybe there is a way, but my time, is money. I spent more than maybe 12 hours of my own time checking and re-checking and running the same parameters through different programs. Still, I had no luck... unless it is an issue with the trial version of BeerSmith... but in any case I can t purchase it hoping that it will be resolved in the real version.

I bought Promash, it worked the first time with no tweaking and the recipe paramters for all of my tried and true recipes, came out the same as they always have. I needed a way to track inventory and calculate recipes... ProMash did the trick. I know a lot of people use BeerSmith, I just could not get it to duplicate results, and after 12 hours of combined tweaking time and posting here, I had to cut my losses.

 

[taylorharris50]

I use Beer Alchemy (for Macs), and I know it has an issue with the volumes. It will drop the IBUs if the volume of finished beer (or volume at pitching) is less than the volume at the end of the boil. Treats the IBUs as if they are finite quantity not a concentration.

Anyway, maybe it is a volume thing.

How do you like Beer Alchemy in general? I am testing it at the moment and like it in general (but a few crashes). $30 is a little pricey but I think they will let you share a license between 3 machines / users.

 

[Boerderij_Kabouter]

Bummer of a story Pol. I love BeerSmith, it has been the easiest to use for me...

I wonder if it is a system config problem on your computer or a corrupt file or something... it just seems like such an easy program to use, I have a hard time believing it was working properly.

 

[The Pol]

Bummer of a story Pol. I love BeerSmith, it has been the easiest to use for me...

I wonder if it is a system config problem on your computer or a corrupt file or something... it just seems like such an easy program to use, I have a hard time believing it was working properly.

It may not be? But, I loaded it three times and messed with it profusely. Which seems silly, when I can place he same recipes in any other program and have it spit out the correct results within 20 minutes. I really have no motivation to spend any more valuable time trying to figure out what the deal is.

 

[Boerderij_Kabouter]

That is a mind boggler.... weird.

 

[BeerSmith]

Hi,
As I mentioned a few posts back, I entered the recipe he provided with the honey the difference is very small (78.8 vice 81) with another program vice BeerSmith using the recipe and settings he provided. The 3 point difference can be accounted for by small variations in the grain database.

I've asked several times for Pol to post the recipe file so I can identify the problem with his data, but to no avail...not sure what else I can do here, but I wish him the very best of luck with whatever tool he settles on.

Cheers,
Brad

 

[The Pol]

I posted every detail including volumes and gravities pre and post boil in a separate thread... still no one could get the same IBU reading, and no where near the 95IBUs that I have been getting.

You are right, I completely gave up after 12 hours of messing. I even increased my batch size to 6 gallons from 5 gallons... still the IBUs were about 88, instead of the target of 75.

I ended up with ProMash because it and a couple other applications allowed me to input a recipe and get the same output the first time, no mystery, no tweaking, no messing. Each application took me about 20 minutes to figure out and ProMash has excellent tutorials built right in to each screen application.

I just need to be able to quickly calculate recipes and input my inventory, nothing fancy.