Do people ever look at oz per gallon when it comes to hops?

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Elysium

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I am listening to the brewdog interview by the brewing network and at Brewdog they recreated an old IPA recipe. They mention the fact that they used 4 grams of hops per liter (I know we can discuss when it was added...but that doesnt matter now). My question is that do people every now and then use a gram/liter (or ounce/gallon) ratio to talk about how much hops there should be in a beer to give it a nice bitternes/aroma/flavour?

I know there is an OG/bitterness ratio....which I still dont entirely understand. So....feel free to talk about that too.

Cheers
 
I don't think it is a very useful ratio because if you are using 1oz/gal it depends on when you are using that 1oz. Throwing 1oz/gal in at the end of the boil versus at the beginning of the boil is going to make two very different beers. That's why OG/IBU is a much more useful ratio.

The OG/IBU ratio is just the beginning gravity of your beer before pitching yeast compared to the total bitterness of the beer. This is useful because it will give you a good idea of how bitter the beer really is. Total IBU's might not be useful enough by themselves when you are comparing a Pale Ale vs an Imperial Stout. They both might have 50 IBU's total but that Pale Ale is going to taste a lot more bitter because it is only 5% ABV compared to 12% for the RIS. Does that make sense?
 
Though I pretty much only make 3 and 10 gal batches now, when evaluating recipes I find myself thinking in terms of oz per 5 gal since most homebrew recipes are written that way. For example if you said you dry hopped a batch at 0.4 oz per gal I would have to figure that out for a minute. If instead you said 2 oz per 5 gal I immediately know how heavily dry hopped that beer is. I agree though it's pretty much for the late hops, which BU:GU ratio doesn't really help with.
 
I don't think it is a very useful ratio because if you are using 1oz/gal it depends on when you are using that 1oz. Throwing 1oz/gal in at the end of the boil versus at the beginning of the boil is going to make two very different beers. That's why OG/IBU is a much more useful ratio.

The OG/IBU ratio is just the beginning gravity of your beer before pitching yeast compared to the total bitterness of the beer. This is useful because it will give you a good idea of how bitter the beer really is. Total IBU's might not be useful enough by themselves when you are comparing a Pale Ale vs an Imperial Stout. They both might have 50 IBU's total but that Pale Ale is going to taste a lot more bitter because it is only 5% ABV compared to 12% for the RIS. Does that make sense?

Yep...makes perfect sense and, say, the Imperial Stout requieres a lot higher malt bill...so the bitterness will be overpowered by the maltiness. That's common sense too. I guess the OG/IBU ratio is a good measuring unit, but eventually it is all about common sense too.
 
For me a complete description of the hops vs malt balance would need three things og/ibu, Fg/ibu, and ibu/oz of hops/gallon. The last one should be able to give a rough idea of how much of the hops are bittering additions vs flavor or aroms but it would have to be broken up into each type of hop in the recipe to be accurate. At that point it's simpler to just include the whole recipe...
 
For me a complete description of the hops vs malt balance would need three things og/ibu, Fg/ibu, and ibu/oz of hops/gallon. The last one should be able to give a rough idea of how much of the hops are bittering additions vs flavor or aroms but it would have to be broken up into each type of hop in the recipe to be accurate. At that point it's simpler to just include the whole recipe...

This is interesting though. Do explain. :)
I am sure there are other there who might wanna know more about this.

So what do you get from FG/IBU, IBU/oz and hops/gallon? What information each of them gives to you?

Do you have a recipe we could look at too to better understand what you mean?
 
I think it's important to understand the context of the original comment. Historical brewing records often stated values such as that - it probably would have been lbs/barrel, which is being converted into g/l for homebrew purposes.

Back in the 19th century and much of the 20th, nobody measured IBU or alpha acids and so on... and the breweries in the UK had only a few types of hops available. They might have brewed a given beer with only one or two. So at that scale, and given the lack of analysis on the hop acid contribution, a weight per volume reference was a practical documentation method in order to reliably repeat the brew.

Also, in those days there were rarely hop additions past the 30 minute mark. It was all bittering at 90 or 60, maybe a 30, and then dry hopping. So the subtleties we deal with now weren't as important.
 
This is interesting though. Do explain. :)
I am sure there are other there who might wanna know more about this.

So what do you get from FG/IBU, IBU/oz and hops/gallon? What information each of them gives to you?

Do you have a recipe we could look at too to better understand what you mean?

Well imo fg/ibu gives a rough idea to the residual sweetness to bitterness, which tells me where I can find it in comparison to a balanced beer vs a super bitter beer vs a malty sweet beer. Ibu per oz of hops per gallon could be used to describe the overall hop profile, ie 1 oz of warrior hops @ 60 min would have a high ibu/oz and even though the same ibu could be obtained with more hops at 15 min it would have a lower ibu/oz so would suggest more hop flavor or aroma.

Another way to approach a numerical representation of the hop aroma could be by comparing the maximum potential ibu of each hop addition and subtracting the actual ibu that addition contributed. For example, 6 oz of something used at flameout contributes x but the same hops at 90 minutes would contribute y. So a simple linear representation of hop aroma/flavor might be (y-x)*h, where h would represent the amount of aroma/flavor prevalent in that specific type of hop.
 
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