trying to understand bitterness. hop stoopid has ibu of 102. i don't taste it being bitter. red hook long hammer is rated like 62, but i think it's bitter as hell. talked to a couple of peeps and they didn't understand either. any and all help would be appreciated. any threads or readables
Im not an expert, but Im pretty sure it depends when the hops are added. Bitterness comes from adding the hops early into the boil, so I'm guessing hop stoopid is using way more late addition hops. You could have also purchased an old sixer of Long Hammer and the hops may have faded into a bitter mess. Just guessing tho.
Don't worry, the problem isn't with you. It is based on a huge misunderstanding many people have about bitterness and IBUs. The first thing to understand about IBUs is that they are a measure of the presence of certain chemicals in the beer. That is all they measure. Furthermore, they are often not actually measured but rather are often estimated from one of three different formulas (which do not necessarily all give the same answer, BTW). In addition the formulas will give you IBU estimates which are actually distorted by the fact that only so much of these chemicals can be held in solution in the beer and so adding more hops doesn't increase the measured IBUs, despite what the formula predicts. It also doesn't increase the perceived bitterness. In reality IBUs don't measure bitterness very well or very reliably and the number of IBUs tells you little to nothing about the bitterness you will perceive simply because there are lots of other things in the beer providing flavors. Thus a very rich malt presence in the beer can mute or dampen the bitterness despite a relatively high number of IBUs. If you were just using plain water and adding IBUs you could look for a relatinship between IBUs and perceived bitterness, but once this messy thing bit called "brewing" gets involved IBUs have no necessary relationship to perceived bitterness. Edit: If you google the following (without quotes) you'll get a lot of hits you can look through: "perceived bitterness beer"
Everything drtth said is awesome, but I'll add that the age of a beer can also have a pronounced impact on its bitterness, at least if it's a very hop-forward beer like an IPA. Perhaps the Hop Stoopid you had was six months old and the Long Hammer was two weeks old -- if that were the case, it could easily explain the discrepancy. I think the main lesson here is that the only way to tell the bitterness of a beer is to taste it.
Recent tests have shown that 60 minute hop additions can only add about 50 IBU's to a beer. You can get more IBU's through later additions surprisingly, but the late addition bitterness can be a lot smoother.
http://www.basicbrewing.com/index.php?page=radio listen to the most recent podcast, it covers all the testing and results.
What drtth said. Some beers are hoppy as heck but aren't bitter. Some are bitter bombs but not hoppy, per se. All depends on the hops and when they are added within the brewing cycle. Don't pay much attention to IBUs.
Something not said here yet (although implied by the "chemical" reference above) is the choice of hop type by the brewer. Some hops are known to have a much more bitter taste to them (and Columbus comes to mind as being one that is very bitter), so the brewer's choice of hops plays a huge role here.
To the OP, there is something quite important in what Mebuzzard is saying here. Some folks seem to think that if a beer is not bitter it isn't hoppy. This is another source of confusion when talking about hops, bitterness, and beer. Hops contribute several flavor components to a beer, only one of which is bitterness.
Depending where added of course, 60 minutes in the boil will blow off all aroma/flavor and just leave behind the bitterness(somehow FWH avoids this). But high Cohumulone hops are going to be more harsh than low Cohumulone hop varieties.
Your explanation is more detailed, but in my humble home brewing experience, I was going to say that it depends on how much malt was added to the formula relative to the hops and perhaps water pH.
There is so much more than that. Hop choice, water profile and how you doctor it, when th hops are added and how well you ferment(temp control, pitching rate are all factors) are all bigger factors than malt selection. One thing on malt selection in a hop forward beer is minimize or dont use crystals at all.
