Are IPAs ruining everything?

[MrBandGuy]

About 4 years ago, I went to Revolution Brewing in Chicago. 20 taps, and 18 of them were IPAs. They were fine, but all pretty similar beers with different hop profiles. I like IPAs, but that showed me they were brewing on trend and not in skill. It was disappointing.

They just started distributing in Louisville, and I found myself remembering this lost opportunity to gain a customer.


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[Dawg LB Steve]

20 taps, and 18 of them were IPAs. They were fine, but all pretty similar beers with different hop profiles.

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Reminds me of when we went to Bearded Iris during the Nashville Borg meetup, similar situation 8 taps, 7 IPA's 1 Stout.

[BlackDuck]

I thought of that too Steve...but Bearded Iris is known for being pretty much an IPA brewer. So you would expect that just about all their taps would be IPA's.

[RickBeer]

One of the challenges is that people are always looking for something new and different (beer is not different from many other things). Many beer "aficionados" in fact know very little about beer, and don't appreciate brewing to style, they just want the next outrageous thing. As a brewery, being true to style and not doing outlandish things is fine, unless you want money in the till. Bills have to be paid.

I know several head brewers that view with disdain some of the trends (like NEIPAs), yet brew them because money matters. I watched one with decades of experience grudgingly try M-43 on tap, and pronounced in alcoholic fruit juice.

I do love when you see "95 IBUs" and such, when it's actually impossible to be above 50 - 60 IBUs from a 60 minute hop boil. Getting very high IBUs is only possible by adding pre-isomerized hop extracts directly to finished beer.

[Dawg LB Steve]

I do love when you see "95 IBUs" and such, when it's actually impossible to be above 50 - 60 IBUs from a 60 minute hop boil.

HUH?

[Beer-lord]

I only boil for 60 minutes and I know I've had more than 95 IBU's. I try not to got that high but for many years I've brewed bitter beers that I know were higher than 60 IBU's.

[RickBeer]

I do love when you see "95 IBUs" and such, when it's actually impossible to be above 50 - 60 IBUs from a 60 minute hop boil.

HUH?

Without getting too nerdy...

- there is a maximum solubility of iso-alpha acids in solution, which is very pH dependent. For normal beer pH, that's around 90mg per liter.

But you can't hit that theoretical max, because only about 30% of alpha acid content of hops is isomerized by the boil, and the boil actually begins degrading conditions. I.E. the hot break. *

- Up to 35% of iso-alpha acids are removed in the spent hop material.*

- Iso-alpha acids also cling to the kettle and equipment, losing another 3% per piece of equipment. **

- Another 5 - 17% is removed by sticking in the yeast that is dumped. ***

Blah, blah... and you get to a max of 50 - 60 IBUs.

Had a lecture on this, lecturer quite passionate about the subject - sources:

*Laufer, S., and Brenner, M. W., Some Practical Considerations on the Fate of Hop Resins in Brewing, Proc. 69th Anniv. Cony. Am. Soc. Brew. Chem. 18-28, 1956.
– **Factors Affecting Hop Bitter Acid Isomerization Kinetics in a Model Wort Boiling System., M. G. Malowicki and T. H. Shellhammer. Journal of American Society of Brewing Chemists, 64(1), 29-32, 2006.
– ***Laws, D. R., McGuinness, J. D., and Rennie, H., The Losses of Bitter Substances During Fermentation, J. Inst. Brew. 78:314-321, 1972.

[RickBeer]

I only boil for 60 minutes and I know I've had more than 95 IBU's. I try not to got that high but for many years I've brewed bitter beers that I know were higher than 60 IBU's.

Per the lecture I went to, mathematically impossible to obtain, without adding pre-isomerized hop extracts directly to finished beer..

[BlackDuck]

So then, how do you explain an IPA at 50 IBU's vs an IPA at 100 IBU's, where the 100 IBU beer is clearly higher than 10 more IBU's than the the 50 IBU beer? How does that happen if it's mathematically impossible to obtain an IBU higher than 60?

And if you would put the 100 IBU beer through a beer labs tests and spectrometer to measure IBU's, then it would only show 50 or 60? I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

[Dawg LB Steve]

I guess if you use 2 oz of a 15% AA hop and setting the utilization to .5 in the recipe builder does only get you to 59.96258 IBU in a 5 gallon batch, but 3 oz of a 15% AA hop @ .5 utilization gets you to 89.93769 IBU. So what I see is you want 50-60 IBU you use the amount of hops needed to reach that or any other IBU goal needed. But what you are saying is it would be the same whether I used 2 oz's of 15% AA hops or 20 oz's of 15% AA hops in my 5 gallon batch?

[mashani]

Regardless of theoretical AAUs extracted:

All I can tell you is I've made a pliney clone with hop extract for bittering, and I've also made it with lots of hops for bittering, and it didn't come out all that different from a perceived bitterness standpoint, but the flavor was more intense with the full hop version, because when you use a ton of hops even in the bittering addition you do get flavors out of them, and even if from nothing else, the hop tannins and such. Some people might not want those flavors, so a small very clean bittering charge might be better for them, but they are a factor that matters in some types of beer. IE I like to make some English IPAs / Old School Burton Ales with 6oz of Goldings as a bittering addition, and a small amount to finish. You can't substitute 1oz of some super high AA hop for the 6oz of Goldings, it won't taste remotely the same if you do, although it might seem just as "bitter".

Perceived bitterness is also probably the key word here, it literally takes about a 7 AAU change for most people to even notice the difference in bitterness levels, and there is a threshold where you just won't notice any more as well, which varies from person to person. But there is more to it then just AAUs, people focus too much on that as some kind of "benchmark", where it in itself isn't the only indicator of how a beer will taste.

[BlackDuck]

I’m not so sure perceived bitterness is what Rick is referring to. He’s talking about mathematics in figuring IBU’s. You can’t really put a math equation to perception, since everyone perceives things differently. Perceived bitterness is completely subjective.


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[mashani]

I’m not so sure perceived bitterness is what Rick is referring to. He’s talking about mathematics in figuring IBU’s. You can’t really put a math equation to perception, since everyone perceives things differently. Perceived bitterness is completely subjective.
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Yes, but what I was trying to say at the beginning is that one batch I used the AAU injectors (hop extracts) which theoretically amped up the AAUs if AAU extraction from hops is different, and in the other I did not. In this theory of lack of utilization, the AAU injected version should have seemed more bitter. It didn't.

So then ok, whatever, even if we say you can't hit 100 IBUs without hop extracts, to me it seems to matter not, the whole "I used more IBUs then you" thing is just garbage anyways when it comes to the final products once they get beyond some point, and whether that point is 60 IBUs because that's all you can get, or 100 IBUs because that's all you can get (that is another # floated out there by people using different math), again whatever, who cares if you can't actually tell.

EDIT: And also as I said just because you aren't getting the IBUs out of a hop doesn't mean you should not be using them in some quantity, even early in the boil. IE the English/Burton ale example, it's not just about getting IBUs sometimes.

[John Sand]

Which goes right to my approach: I don't care if "technically" the IBUs are this or that. I care if I achieve the desired result. The math and theory are interesting, and somewhat informative. And I know there are brewers who love a detailed scientific process. I'm just a guy that makes beer, drinks it, and wants it to be good.

[ScrewyBrewer]

For a price there are IBU testing companies out there who will analyze your beer sample and send you a full report. It would be fun project for a club or group of brewers to split the cost, cast a vote for the number of IBUs and see who comes closer. Having worked with a number of hop utilization formulas over the years myself my favorite saying when estimating IBUs is from John Palmer.

"Utilization numbers are really an approximation. Each brew is unique; the variables for individual conditions, i.e. vigor of the boil, wort chemistry, or for losses during fermentation, are just too hard to get a handle on from the meager amount of published data available. Then why do we bother, you ask? Because if we are all working from the same model and using roughly the same numbers, then we will all be in the same ballpark and can compare our beers without too much error. Plus, when the actual IBUs are measured in the lab, these models are shown to be pretty close." ~John Palmer (How To Brew)