Hi,
The wife and I finally have our 3bbl brewery up and running. We have four brews sold but initial feedback is our beers are a tad too bitter.
It’s not easy to dial in precise numbers with only a few brews under our belt. The gentleman who we purchased the brewery from gave us an equipment profile with boil hop utilisation set at 125% and 23% for hop stand.
Can anyone help us with thought why our beers are a tad on the bitter side.
The four brew were 4.4% Amber, 4.5 and 4.8 hazy pales with different hops and a 6.1 west cost ipa.
Thank you any advice.
Cheers
Share recipe to extract more info. 125% of hop utilization is totally impossible. for more info check tinseth hop utilization graph.
The utilization curve uniform after 60 minutes and it doesn't go more than 25% (depends on volume, hop alpha and OG and BG).
Dial in your all numbers in tinseth equation and calculate. I hope it will help.
ThanksAttached Files
Hi Dheeraj,
Thank you for your advice.
I’m a little confused, we use BeerSmith for our recipes and on their website Brad states 125% and even higher is possible for multi barrel systems… see image. This is what made me think that I should up the %
That 125% that Beersmith is referring to is not the overall utilization of the hops but rather the increase in utilization when scaling from homebrew size to multi-bbl size.
I have been using Beersmith in my 7bbl brewpub for 8 years now and have dialed in the bitterness pretty well/consistently. What does Beersmith say your IBU's are for your IPA, for example? How many additions? Do you whirlpool? For how long? I use just a small addition for the full boil then pick up the bulk of my IBUs from a 5 minute whirlpool and 20 minute rest -- all calculated in the software. ~60 IBU's is my West Coast IPA calculation in Beersmith. Had it lab test a few years back and it was quite close.
Dave
Hey! Why bother with numbers when your taste is the ultimate guide? If your beers are too bitter, then lower the hop charge a bit. Your utilization percent is academic and not really important unless you compare to another system. Don't get hung up on numbers and let your taste guide you. Hope all is well.
Hi,
We brewed an APA yesterday before I read your reply.
I deliberately lowered the IBU to only 24, the main hop charge were at 5 mins and whirlpool using Cascade hops.
The whole brew day was on point, no issues and on time.
Post boil sample = bitter. Software said BU/GU 0.71 and RBR 0.76
Any thoughts please.
Post time 2022-10-5 11:29:09
Author