Struggeling to understand balance value

[cederbusch]

I do understand the BU:GU ratio. Around 0,5 is considered as balanced, and below is more malty, and above more bitter.

But then there is this BV, balance value. There is very little info on the matter. http://beercolor.netfirms.com/balance.html is frequently referenced to for more info, but that site is dead.

So what is this value? Is everything above 1,0 more bitter, and below more malty? And how should I use this value to make a better beer?

Plis help!

 

[dstockwell]

Maybe this will explain some more.
https://klugscheisserbrauerei.wordpress.com/beer-balance/

 

[eric19312]

It is a way to think about designing a beer and maybe most useful when thinking about imperializing a recipe. As a flavor bitter balances sweet. Taste sweet wort pre boil and post boil. Post boil there is actually more surgar/volume but doesnt taste as sweet as the unhopped wort. If you increase the grain bill and used the same yeast (say taking a 1.050 APA recipe up to 1.075 to make some sort of imperial APA if you don't adjust the hops the resulting beer may be too sweet. As a starting point if you liked the apparent sweetness of the 1.050 beer look at the BU:GU ratio and try to keep it similar. You may get away with just increasing hops by 50% but likely you will see reduced isomerazation in the richer wort and may need even more than 50% to maintain that same ratio.

 

[cederbusch]

Maybe this will explain some more.
https://klugscheisserbrauerei.wordpress.com/beer-balance/

Thank you!!

It now makes sense.

 

[ajdelange]

When you have two degrees of freedom one can obviously describe the situation with the number pair v1 and v2 representing the two values but there is a great temptation among men to express them as v1 and r = v1/v2 or v2 and r as sometimes the ratio is revelatory. It's the same information either way but certainly you are aware of things like the pe ratio on the stock market. People do these detailed studies as to what pe ratio correlates with and what it doesn't. One guy even studied ep = 1/pe and wrote a whole paper on it.

If one of these ratios lends you insight, use it. Otherewise stick with v1 and v2.

Ratios can be misleading if they are relied on a a complete descriptor (1 degree of freedom) when there are in fact more than 1). A well known example in the current context is the chloride to sulfate ratio often cited as being a predictor of beer flavor. Any child can see that a beer made with 10 mg/L each of sulfate and chloride will be nothing like one made with 350 mg/L of each though the ratio, 1, is the same in both cases yet many, even today, blindly design their beers using the ratio rather than v1 and v2.