IBU ratings

Keeping in mind that you're not doing any sort of precise calculation due to the unreliability of the given IBUs, you can estimate a good ballpark gravity unit by simply multiplying the abv by 10. We're just trying to keep things in context, and really just notice if anything seems out of whack.

So, if an IPA of 8.5% abv lists 85 IBUs, that ratio of 1.0 is right around where it should be. Or, in other words, I'd raise my eyebrow at an 8.5% IPA with 55 IBUs just as much as at an 8.5% Doppelbock with 55 IBUs (when the ratio should be more in the 0.3 range).

 

Sorry to go off tangent from the topic.

My gripe was about the high plato/maltiness/sweetness of the beer thats just makes you not hungry anymore, if you know what I mean. One extreme probably is brut, the other end would be say Brothers Cider.

Learnt something new today.
If I understood you correctly,
an 8.5% IPA with 55 IBUs might mean its too malty.
an IPA of 5.5% abv lists 85 IBUs, might mean hop aroma/flavour/bitterness would be high.
close to ratio 1 beers might probably be what they call "balanced".

 

Not exactly, but I'm posting from a phone and trying to be brief so probably didn't explain it as well as I could have.

Essentially each style has its own sort of happy zone with regards to bitterness/gravity where it just feels right. For IPAs it hovers around 1.0, so anything significantly lower will tend to be too malty. With the Doppelbock, they're usually best closer to 0.3 than 0.4, but in that range, so my example of .65 would tend to be too bitter.

So there's no standard ratio across styles. Pale Ales around 0.75, Pilsners around 0.6, and so on. To get a better handle on this stuff you could always check the BJCP style guidelines where they give a range of IBU and o.g. per style.

But, like I said in the previous post, it's not so much a be all and end all, but more of a way to get a sense of whether something may be off.

 

Our IBU specs are based off readings after packaging.

 

Drop the mic...bingo.

 

What would you guys think of a subjective scale developed by our in-house tasters? Something as basic as like a restaurant where they put the spice level 1-10. I'm a proponent of that... I think it would provide the most value to everyone.

The IBU scale is flawed, even when measured with a spectrometer, especially in heavily dry-hopped beers. Research from Hopsteiner on humulinones has proven this in the last few years. To give a quick summary, basically dry-hopping adds a small amount of bitterness from humulinones. In beers that had been hopped traditionally, this discrepancy hadn't showed up in the finished product because dry-hopping also reabsorbs some iso-alpha and the effects had essentially cancelled each other out. Now we are dry-hopping at levels that actually contribute bitterness. Then the issue for the spectrometer is that it reads humulinones the same way that it reads iso-alpha acids, but humulinones are only 66% as bitter. Sorry if I took an interesting subject and made it incredibly boring but I thought I'd share.

Mikey

 

I think 10 years ago or so this would have been nice but now I think people are more concerned with whether there is any perceived bitterness or not, not so much whether its a 7 vs 8. Or more specifically what is the flavor profile. You might call the scale West Coast (7-10), East Coast (4-6) and NE IPA (0-3)

Now that's a bit of a joke but I really don't care specifically how bitter an IPA is. I can usually judge that by knowing who the brewery is and what type of beers they produce. There are certain expectations for how an English IPA vs Belgian vs East/West/NE IPA's will taste as well as associated bitterness. The style of IPA and the description kind of tells me all I need to know. I'd prefer to know what your intentions for the bitterness were than what your group of tasters perceived. I think a lot of breweries skimp on their beer descriptions, perhaps because they release too many beers too often and can't keep up