The Beer Borg

As homebrewers we are always looking at ways to improve our beer and gain consistency in our processes and brewing methods. Over the last year or so, possible due to the popularity of New England IPAs (NEIPAs) it seems like the use of hop stands has become a more prevalent method of adding bitterness, flavor, and aroma to our beer. One of the problems with this method is being able constantly determining how much bitterness and flavor you are actually getting from the hop stand especially across multiple batches of beer.

Hop stand refers to a method whereby hops are added at the conclusion of the boil, once the flame has been turned off, and allowed to steep for a given amount of time with the goal of extracting flavor and aroma while limiting the isomerization of alpha acids (bitterness).

Brulosophy.com

On an episode of Basic Brewing Radio (Dec. 13, 2018) , James Spencer introduced a way for individual brewers to calculate hop bitterness that he calls Hop Stand Bittering Units (HSBUs). As he explains in the podcast this is a way to consistently estimate the amount of bitterness you get from hops when they are added as a hop stand to your wort. This formula is dependent on your process and system and is a benchmark for you as an individual brewer to determine how much bitterness you are adding to your beer across batches. Your HSBUs will be unique to you and your process and is merely a gauge for your personal use to determine hop stand bitterness. Things you also need to keep in mind when using this formula are temperature of the wort and the duration or how long the hop stand is. So a higher temperature or a longer hop stand may yield more bitterness. So if you’re trying to determine a baseline make sure that your temp and duration are consistent across batches.

According to James, the basic formula is to multiply the number of ounces or grams of hops by the alpha acid percentage then divided by the volume of wort. Let’s say you always do your hop stand at 190F (87.7C) for 30 minutes. So if you had 1 oz (28 g) of Cascade hops with an Alpha Acid (AA) of 7% that you were going to add as a hop stand to 5 gallons (18.9 L) of wort the formula would be:

English: 1 oz X 7 AA = 7 | 7 divided by 5 gallons of wort = 1.4 HSBUs
Metric: 28 g X 7 AA =196 |196 divided by 18.9 liters of wort = 10.37 HSBUs

Likewise if you had 2 oz of Citra hops with an AA of 17.5% the formula would be:

English: 2 oz X 17.5 AA = 35 | 35 divided by 5 gallons of wort = 7 HSBUs
Metric: 56 g X 17,5 AA = 980 | 980 divided by 18.9 liters of wort = 51.85 HSBUs

With this formula you can now accurately calculate the amount of bitterness you add during a hop stand to any batch of beer.

If you find that the bitterness is too much or too little you can simply increase or decrease the amount of hops for the hop stand from batch to batch until you find the sweet spot for the desired bitterness. You could also tweak the bitterness by increasing or decreasing either the temperature or duration of the hop stand.

What are your thoughts on this? Is this something that is useful or is it irrelevant? Let us know in the forum.