I have been brewing a few years and I am about to move to all grain. I use the Brewers friend calculator to help construct my extract recipes. I was tinkering with a simple IPA recipe for all grain. Standard 7.5G boil. plugged in my grain bill and had that set up well. But when I went to the hops I selected my bittering hop as always. This is where I ran into the issue im typing about...I plugged in 1oz of Magnum hops for the entire 60min boil and it clocked in at almost 60 IBU!!! Is this a software issue. Magnum averages around 15% alpha acids. What's the deal? I didn't think there was that much of a difference between extract and all grain hops wise. Yeah I knew a few adjustments were required but 58 IBU seems insane from just ONE ounce. What gives?
I agree - my independent calculations come up with about 58 IBU (that's for a 7.1 g boil, which is close).
I simply do not understand. I compared 2 exact recipes on a website. One all grain and the other extract. The only difference is the all grain takes .75 oz of bittering hops versus a whole ounce on the extract. The rest of the boil schedule is identical.
I don't use Brewer's Friend, but perhaps you could post some screen shots. ETA: And no, it shouldn't make any difference whether the wort is from a mash or from a jug/bag. Either Brewer's Friend has a flaw, or there's some operator error/misunderstanding.
The dead ringer IPA from Northern Brewer. The only difference is the all grain has .25oz less on the bittering additions. I can't quantify that according to the calculator. Im at work so I can't really get into screenshots
There's a lot of difference between using 0.75 oz of hops at 15% alpha and 1 ounce. For 0.75 oz the IBU drops to about 43 IBU.
Check your brew house efficiency. Extract brewing defaults to 32%, if you switch the recipe to All-Grain, it doesn't adjust your brew house efficiency back up to 70%-72%. This impacts the IBU calculation. The # grain impacts the calculation too, so if you aren't exact in the calculation from #DME or #LME to #Grain the IBU will be off. Extract - 35% efficiency I get 47 IBU All-Grain - 72% efficiency I get 50 IBU
Ok I just plugged in both recipes separately...they came up with identical OG and FG. The all grain ended up with 64 IBU and the extract had 40 IBU. That doesn't seem close. I doubt the beers would taste close to the same. I was told by my LHBS that the hops merely need to be tweaked. This sounds like it needs to be redone completely. My plan is to perfect an extract recipe and then convert it to all grain.
No, extract brewing is 35%, all-grain is 70-72% (estimated) this is calculated based on individual's unique equipment and process (like the difference between batch sparging & fly sparging, and variation in grain milling, and pH during mash, etc.)
That's typically what extract brewing is... you boil in a smaller volume of water (hence hop utilization is different) then top up with water to your target volume. If you are merely swapping extract out for all-grain, but keeping a full volume boil, then you the brewing efficiency stays the same.
I think I got it. I just need to tweak the hops on the first half of the boil. Sounds even better money wise since all grain was already cheaper.
Yeah I got it now. That was never explained to me in those simple terms. I have it now. I do have formulas for the extract to grain conversions so im pretty good there. Thanks for everyone's help as usual!
