High vs. Low Alpha Acid Hops For Bittering | exBEERiment
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- čas přidán 10. 09. 2024
- This episode is sponsored by Great Fermentations, a family owned homebrew shop offering a wide range of brewing gear and ingredients. Check out everything they have to offer at greatfermentat...!
Does all hop bitterness taste the same? To find out, we brew two Blonde Ales, each estimated at 40 IBU, where one uses a bunch of low alpha acid hops and the other relies on a smaller amount of high alpha acid hops. The finished beers are then served to blind participants to see if they can tell them apart, and we also have the beers analyzed by White Labs to verify their actual IBUs.
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Props to White Labs for helping confirm this!
I still reckon your hop spider is holding you back
That would make for a good experiment. 2 batches, same amount of hops, one goes into the hop spider, the other goes directly into the boil.
@@hopsinandoutbrewz We got you! czcams.com/video/1AHJxG3SuJI/video.htmlsi=tzLLytTMoT6mLdrO
We've done that xBmt, in fact Martin made a video about it. Unfortunately, CZcams won't allow me to share links to our website or even our even our other videos. That said they're not difficult to find, just do a keyword search on our site or our channel!
Asked and answered. czcams.com/video/1AHJxG3SuJI/video.htmlsi=qQkHkf-2uBhS6Ezo
I had replied with the show episode link as well as the website link. Haha. Same deal- both comments expunged.
I always feel like i'm watching older content, didn't expect to find a new video!
This channel is worth a sub, Martin is on his game with a new video every week!!
I reckon the age of the hops and their handling + storage since crop year really effects the level of potency when talking about bittering capacity. I’d like to see this test plainly done with fresh, accurate hops, stored and handled carefully, and see what kind of numbers pop up. Thanks guys for giving us a look!
A good exbeeriment might be to test a completely different variety of hops but similar AA content just for bittering. Wonder if that would make a difference.
I like this idea
In my experience, it can make a slight difference, especially if you’re using lower AA% hops that will contribute extra flavors by volume. Ex: 3oz of low-AA% Tettnanger are going to have a bigger impact than 0.5oz of Magnum.
I really love the variety of tests you did with this one. Quite the effort! Well done, Martin!
The more I watch your videos (and I’ve been watching since the start of the home brew challenge) the more I think just brew what you like and don’t worry about IBUs EBCs and the potential of grassy off flavours
Could you do the same experiment but on the aroma side? Like 0 minute or whirpool addition... thanks for what you do!
This was great. Thanks for the amazing content!
Please make a adjuncts comparison.
Mail ordering my ingredients I often end up with just about 75% of the malt I would need for the next batch. I would like to see a test of 25% of the malt bill substituted with different adjuncts I can buy in every grocery store like rice, oats, sugar, honey and so on. What are the best substitutes?
Great topic, well done!
Cohumulone has been said to be a contributor to harsher perceived bitterness, brulosophy probably did test with that but if not you should consider it.
Great video. Is it running at slightly higher playback speed? Something feels weird 😅
When I heard 40 IBU for a Blonde ale, I thought, no, that is an American Pale Ale. However, with the testing measuring 21.5 & 25 IBU, that is perfectly in the BJCP Blonde ale range and just under the APA range. An interesting comparison would be to taste compare your Blonde against a commercial Blonde and a commercial APA.You would hope your beer would have a similar bitterness of a commercial Blonde, but if that is not what you find, then it indicates that IBU lab testing is just one small component of the complex sensory experience of bitterness.
Martin, being a data guy yourself, have you tried the SMPH model for estimating IBU that was talked about on The Brulab episode 76 with John Paul Hosom? It might give an IBU estimate closer to the ~25 you got back from Whitelabs. I have always been disappointed with how low the bitterness comes out I my beers even with a high IBU in BeerSmith until I started using SMPH. It works great for me! 👍
The biggest thing in this video is in my opinion that the amount of IBU's is that far off.
I'm really curious now what causes this, and If it's something with your methods / setup / the beer software calculation and if it's a thing that more home brewers are dealing with.
Is there an 'easy' way to measure IBU units in beer without sending the beer off to a lab?
The spider can reduce extraction by 10%. BUT my theory is people are chilling their wort too fast. The IBU calculators are based on experiments from years ago, when they were likely using crappy chillers, not the fancy ones that say they chill to pitch temp in 5 minutes. Want to hit your calculated IBU's? Ditch those expensive chillers and do a nice slow chill that takes 30 minutes or more...
@@srjmpls In that case I would actually prefer to add in a bit more hops. Hops are definitely costly, but a batch of ruined beer because of an infection is way more expensive.
@@jac540 Certainly an option, if you can figure out how much more hops to add. But infections from slow (or really, just normal) chilling are exceptionally rare. If infections from slow/regular chilling were common, nobody would be doing extended hop stands for NEIPA's at below 180F. I am not saying to chill so slowly that it takes an hour; simply that really fast chilling may not be a good goal if you want to hit your IBU target. This is one of several experiments I've read about where the IBU was too low once tested. What did he miss by? More than 15 points? That's pretty extreme. There is something modern brewers are doing differently from when the models were created years ago. (Those models are what are being used by the IBU software calculators.) They brewed lots of beers and had them tested for IBU's, then developed the models. My bet is they didn't have super fast chillers back then. Just a theory, but something has to explain why every time someone sends in a modern beer for IBU testing it seems to come in way low.
I'd like to see this with a much higher hopped IPA
How do commercial IBU label ratings hold up to lab test?
As a chemist, I've never seen someone pipet directly into the Cuvet while its still in the instrument. I can't decide if this is genius or really bad practice.
A bit of both 🤣 We clean the instrument and cuvette regularly. But the amount of samples, we have to test would take an extra long time. I think we need more cuvettes.
I wonder why this guy always uses low IBU beers during these hop tests. Man, crank it up, dude. If you want to really test the variable, make a beer that highlights it
100%. The xBMT is not whether the beer is good, it’s whether the ingredient difference is noticeable. Crank out a 100 IBU Pale Ale and retest!
Cascade is my least favorite hop varietal. Much prefer Noble or Near Noble types...
Does this data, combined with the “aged hop” xbmt, suggest that we should be adding DOUBLE the hops that our estimation calculates in brewing software?
I would say "NO" ... but you go ahead and test that for us 🤪
I think you want to be consistent, I would say no. If your software is indicating 40 IBU, and reality says it is 20IBU but it tastes good and tastes to style, I wouldn't change anything. If you doubled your hops then it would be way more bitter than what your current perception of the bitterness is, which could be unpleasant even though 'reality' says it is correct to style. Also, 'everyones' perception of bitterness are based on the calculators in software so sharing recipes and talking in general as a community, we are all talking the same thing. Also #2, Martin said, after testing, he got about 30% of the expected bitterness from one beer, and then around 50% the bitterness on this batch. So there is randomness there as well. You would never know how much you actually need to modify your hop bill, you couldn't just say double it every time.
I really only see this changing if hop calculators actually got very accurate, but it isn't really possible since the AA ratings on hops are just from a small sample of an entire crop, and the samples are tested extremely fresh. We just have to live with the built-in ambiguity of alpha acids, and the software calculators are as good as any method to manage it.
And I'll have to watch the aged vs fresh hops video again...
@@cidmontenegro8225 thank you for the thought out explanation! It makes sense as there is some random outcomes, as you said. I guess if youtube, and the home brew club all speak relatively to the estimations that we rely on, then like you said we’re all speaking the same language. Good points!!
@@DimpieDeBruyn LOL that’s what I like so much about this channel! Martin goes out of his way to potentially waste $50-$100 worth of wort/ beer so I don’t have to 😂
I need to have a worthy 2 gallon test batch system, because the fear of dumping 5 gallons overcomes me lmao
Wellllll, there is of course something in between adding double the amount of hops, or as dimpie and cid suggest no extra hops: add a conservative extra amount of hops and be smart about it.
Conservative: let's say adding an additional 20% extra hops in your next beers: if its not the way to go you just have beers that are slightly more bitter and hoppy than they should be.
Be smart about it: add the extra hops to beers which are suited to it. Blond or tripel come to mind: lately there are more and more blonds and tripels out there with higher hop profiles, having your blond taste a bit like a pale ale is not the worst thing that could happen. I wouldn't do it for beers which are more biased towards malt flavors.
Norm tha God!!
Did the beers' bitterness taste like you would expect a 40 IBU beer to taste?
Maybe perform the triangle test with more time between each test. Maybe 4 hours or 1 day?? I find that the first beer of the day tastes wonderful then over the next few glasses I lose the ability to perceive the unique qualities of that beer. The next night/s - Same.
There is a bit of "fatigue" that occurs when you taste fifteen samples in less than an hour. Martin and I tend to take a sip a water between tastings, to try and "cleanse" our palates.
Yeah 15 samples in an hour would have your taste buds totally confused I reckon.