IBU ratings

Often the IBU rating on the beer bottle is a calculation of what the brewer put into the beer. When the hops were added and how they were handled can impact the actual amount of bitterness in the beer. How bitter the beer actually tastes depends on the hop variety, the other ingredients in the beer, how the beer was fermented, the age of the beer, the temperature at which the beer is served, and the person drinking the beer. Try a few different styles of beer with similar IBU ratings on the bottle - for example a Belgian IBA, a wild ale, an Imperial IPA and a new England IPA. How you perceive the bitterness will vary depending on the style of the beer. For smaller craft breweries the IBU number is probably inaccurate and while larger breweries have the equipment to accurately measure IBUs, they are more of a general guide than an accurate predictor of how bitter you will perceive the beer to be. Most people will have trouble distinguishing between the bitterness in an 80 IBU beer and a 100 IBU beer and anything over 100 IBUs, while worthy of bragging rights, is probably wasted hops. All that said - I like seeing IBUs on the bottle because it gives me a general idea of what to expect.

 

Following along with @bbtkd I don't put a lot of credence in IBU because I know that a lot of it is inaccurate. Many of the numbers given are simply based on recipe estimates, and I can assure you that many of those are wrong.

Unless a brewery owns, knows how to use, and pays the monthly costs associated with using a spectrophotometer they're just guessing.

That's not to say that there aren't breweries out there doing that, there are plenty that have great lab set-ups, but there are definitely more that do not.

Additionally, as noted by @TongoRad, the actual IBU measurement is not a completely quantifying measurement, at least when we get beyond the basic beer range.

 

There is measured/estimated IBU and subjectively perceived IBU. I've had high IBU beers where the bitterness was "offset" with other flavors, making it more palatable, hence a lower perceived bitterness.

 

Not something I look at anymore.

 

Even when the IBUs are measured, there's no guarantee that's the value the beer in your glass has. It also depends on when the measurement was made. There's a big drop off in IBUs during primary fermentation, for example.

 

I don't pay very much attention to IBUs at all. Just in my personal experience, they've been all over the place with minimal consistency. Why bother?

 

When comparing beers between different styles IBUs are worthless. When comparing beers within the same style IBUs information has some marginal use, but my purchase choice will probably be based on other factors.

 

Ron, for those breweries that do indeed measure IBUs wouldn't they do this for the beer that is being packaged (i.e., finished beer)?

Cheers!

@NeroFiddled @BillManley @SierraTerence @SixpointMikey @honkey @brianhink

 

A comparison of the American-style Barleywine to the English-style Barleywine is a great example of what effect the amount of hops has on a beer style. Loosely speaking, the American-style has much more hops added in comparison to its English cousin with similar other ingredients for malt, etc. The resulting beers are very different, and most of us probably prefer one style over the other just because of those hops.

 

So you understand what works at a restaurant doesn't work at a liquor store. Unfortunately some business practices aren't ubiquitous.
And you speak to my point that brewing practices can make up for things like IBU, however no brewer can make fuggles taste like citra, regardless of brewing experience. You can bet your lillie white ass on that. So yes, recipe is very important. Also, if costs were sooooo important, why would so many brewers like @honkey worry about hop selection and fly to Yakima? Why would brewers like @erway design their beers to have multiple hop additions so in the absence of one cultivar, the beer will still be perceived as unchanged? And why, for the love of God why, would brewers be using such copious amounts of hops in the new styles of IPA if they weren't concerned with the final product more so than the cost of making up 5 lousy IBU?

I'm sorry that's been your experience.

 

Changed that for you.

IBU is a measure of the amount of certain chemicals in the liquid. The amount of bitterness is what the human perceives--two difference scales, two different measurement procedures.

 

But is it really the amount of hops used that is most critical or is it the varieties of hops used that are the major contributor to the flavor differences? (e.g., C hops vs. Fuggles, Golding, etc.)

 

I'd have to do a little research to answer that. I'll guess that barleywines mostly use bittering hops and don't use much flavoring or aroma hops, and that allows the malts to shine through. I'll also guess that the choice of flavor and aroma hops will vary with the brewer to give some uniqueness to their beer, but those hops are likely not the stars.

P.S. A quick look at 4 barleywine clone recipes shows that bittering hops are typically 2-3 times the flavoring and aroma hops in total so that all of the malt sweetness in this 'big boy' style can be balanced, and a quick look at a standard IPA recipe (Harpoon clone) showed bittering hops to be equal to the total of the flavor and aroma.

 

IBU's are still something that are still largely misunderstood. I always get questions in my taproom about IBU's (I don't list them on our menu). Some people think that high IBU's automatically equals a lot of hops, others realize that is a measurement only of bitterness derived from iso-alpha-acids but fail to grasp that the number is not indicitive of the perception of bitterness. I tell them they're like points on "Whose Line Is It Anyways?."

That is the simple answer obviously, but in hop bursted beers (like most NEIPA's) IBU's are more of a side effect of trying to achieve a certain intensity of aroma from a whirlpool addition. If the intensity of aroma remains the same from year to year for your hop variety, but the alpha acids change, the lesser of two evils for those types of beers is to sacrifice a change in IBU's (Which will probably be slight). At my last brewery, I would back out the whirlpool IBU's and adjust the total IBU's with my bittering addition, but I don't really do bittering additions in Tombstone, so that's not really an option. All that said, the quality of the bitterness from whirlpool additions is so different from that of bittering additions that a few IBU's will rarely (I want to say "never," but I'm sure someone like Charlie Bamforth with a very well trained palate could prove me wrong) be noticeable to the consumer. I do know that I do my own sensory evaluations and actively work to keep my palate in shape and I can't tell a difference (in regard to bitterness...aroma is a different story) in my beers when the new harvest comes in.

This is an example of the quality of the bitterness making a difference (or breweries mislabeling their IBU's). I've had some true, tested 60 IBU beers that were so harshly bitter that they were undrinkable. Pliny the Elder on the other hand has very high IBU's and has never felt harsh in any way to me.

I think you're mostly right here, but that your explanation doesn't tell the full story. I occasionally send beers off to a lab to have them tested and I've never had a surprise where a beer was off by more than 5 IBU's from my calculations. It's all about knowing your utilization rates at every point in the process which is where so many breweries fall short. They'll plug in Beersmith Tinseth numbers and assume their IBU's are close to accurate, when in fact, most breweries get around 35%-40% utilization from a 60 minute addition and 12%-20% from a whirlpool addition. If you have your beers analyzed, you should be able to calculate within an acceptable range. Few breweries, even the ones that analyze every batch, hit their specific IBU level every time. There is a margin of error just like there is for every metric that gets analyzed in the brewery. In fact, one friend in Colorado owns a pretty large and well respected brewery told me last year that they occasionally see swings of up to 10 IBU's on some of their IPA's (I've never seen this in any of my independent lab tests on my beers, but I also am not having every single batch tested like they are). They use that information to determine that they need their sensory panel to decide if the beer is up to par and they'll guide them towards the bitterness levels in their questioning. They've never dumped or rejected a batch based on their IBU testing as their 20 person sensory panel has approved every one of them.

If they test their wort, it's highly likely that they are a brewery that tests multiple times on every batch to determine if anything has changed in process. They probably have a graph of their expected IBU drop during fermentation and their final IBU number should be based off of packaged beer on the day of packaging or shortly after.

This is a tough concept to explain without being able to show someone first hand, but similar to my comment about the quality of bitterness above, the quality of oils is perhaps the most important aspect of hop aroma. Not all hops are created equal. I've had times when I've selected lots and found that hops that had more total oils smelled worse and less intense than lots that had less total oils, but a better oil quality. So while variety and amount used are both important, it is more important that the hops are of a high quality. I use a theory of the Aroma Unit to evaluate beers. It is not a very scientific approach because attempting to calculate aroma units off of amounts of oils in hops is a futile exercise due to the varying quality of the oils. I make an attempt to calculate aroma units based off of my idea of a "complete" hop aroma which is my way of trying to maximize every compound possible from hop varieties and blending them together to create a greater intensity.

 

Exactly!

Cheers!

@patto1ro

 

I’d add to this that I like bitter, but a balanced bitter. You need malt to balance, but it’s delicate, you can’t go to far either way or it’s a big miss. It’s why I think session ipas are generally shit, there’s nothing to balance the hops, it’s just bitter awful garbage.

 

I mean, if some breweries are putting obscure shit like "original gravity" on their labels, I don't see why not

 

its a great suggestion, though I rarely see gravity/plato being indicated.
i would highly appreciate that.

that said, my knowledge of gravity/plato is about the amount of sugars in the beer, hope im correct on this.
sometimes i would unknowingly have a deceptive high gravity (and with high IBUs) beer, and it'll ruin my meal and i'll have this "full" sensation after the pint.

 

True. The IBUs continue to fall after packaging.