Silver_Is_Money
Larry Sayre, Developer of 'Mash Made Easy'
It seems that the world of IBU calculators has nearly universally accepted that pellet hops yield on a weight for weight basis 10% more IBU's than do whole leaf or plug hops. But is this true? What did the major players in hop IBU bitterness calculation have to say about pellets?
1) Tinseth never stated, and definitively states that he never once tested a pellet hop. His is quoted only as stating that for pellet hops "all bets are off".
2) Daniels said pellet IBU's are likely between 1 and 1.25 times those of leaf.
3) Garetz said 1.1 times as strong as leaf (or 10%). He is the source of the 10% we accept today as gospel.
4) Mosher said pellets yield 1.33 times more IBU's than leaf.
5) I'm not aware of Rager's opinion here.
6) Noonan scales the IBU's of pellets from 1.0 to 1.5 times the IBU's of leaf based upon remaining boil time.
And all of these men are essentially merely guessing. And their guesses are well dated and hearken back to pellet infancy, when production and storage methods likely yielded pellets with noticeably less "retained over time" IBU strength than the pellets of today. So why do we generally delude ourselves into a firm acceptance of 1.1X or 10%? And then worse yet, impose this factor upon the Tinseth model.
Personally I believe the truth for modern pellets more likely lies somewhere in the range of pellets yielding in the range of 25% more IBU's than leaf. But this is also merely a guess based upon my taste buds.
1) Tinseth never stated, and definitively states that he never once tested a pellet hop. His is quoted only as stating that for pellet hops "all bets are off".
2) Daniels said pellet IBU's are likely between 1 and 1.25 times those of leaf.
3) Garetz said 1.1 times as strong as leaf (or 10%). He is the source of the 10% we accept today as gospel.
4) Mosher said pellets yield 1.33 times more IBU's than leaf.
5) I'm not aware of Rager's opinion here.
6) Noonan scales the IBU's of pellets from 1.0 to 1.5 times the IBU's of leaf based upon remaining boil time.
And all of these men are essentially merely guessing. And their guesses are well dated and hearken back to pellet infancy, when production and storage methods likely yielded pellets with noticeably less "retained over time" IBU strength than the pellets of today. So why do we generally delude ourselves into a firm acceptance of 1.1X or 10%? And then worse yet, impose this factor upon the Tinseth model.
Personally I believe the truth for modern pellets more likely lies somewhere in the range of pellets yielding in the range of 25% more IBU's than leaf. But this is also merely a guess based upon my taste buds.