do you use rager or tinseth?

I use tinseth. I think beersmith II was set to tinseth when I installed it. I think many or most here use tinseth, but don't quote me on that. I know if I talk IBUs, I'm talking tinseth. Thus, it's possible I may sometimes be full of crap when discussing bitterness in these threads.

 

The standard advice [heard first (by me) from Jamil on one of his podcasts] is to pick one formula and stick with it. That way you'll know what a particular calculation is going to be like on your particular setup. This is probably the best advice available, but it isn't without its flaws, which are the following. The various utilization curves do not all have the same shape versus time. For example, Tinseth is a simple exponential curve while many other curves are more sigmoid in shape. In the old days this wasn't such a big deal as most of the bittering came from a standard 60 minute addition, but these days with homebrewers' propensity to utilize large amounts of late-hop additions, the hops schedule itself becomes important to the differences among IBU calculations. On top of this, the ever increasingly popular method of a post-boil steep is beginning to make these standard utilization curves even less useful as estimators of bitterness.

 

I use Tinseth. But the important thing is pick one and stick with it. Then you'll always know what 30 computed IBUs (or whatever) tastes like in your brewery, and you can extrapolate up down from there.

 

I think Rager is more accurate when using heavy late hop additions, as tinseth gives them next to no bittering value. For example my Brett IIPA (nothing but 1 min additions), is something like 13 ibu tinseth, and 90 ibu rager. Now I doubt its actually 90, but its clearly MUCH MUCH MUCH more bitter than 13.

 

Tinseth was most accurate for my system - converted half barrels, all grain. IBUs were measured and the estimates were closest for Tinseth. This was in an article late 2009 by Gordon Strong in Zymurgy. None of the models are worth a darned at high IBU, I.e. over 90 to 100.

 

Tinseth. See Vikeman's explanation.

 

You never know until you have your beers measured.

 

Same reasons everyone else has given, etc., but my answer to your original question is "neither". To my perception, it's Garetz that seems most accurate for my system. It took a few brews after getting a new brew kettle before I finally figured that the Garetz readings seemed to best match what I was getting from my beers.

 

BJCP guidelines use the 'IBU scale.' The only way to know true IBUs is laboratory measurement. Tinseth and Rager are just two of the models used to predict IBUs.

 

You have 15 minutes tops to judge the beer while writing your taste comments and scoring. What is your guess?

 

“What is your guess?” The judges use their palates to assess the beer and give the awards to the hoppiest beers!

Cheers!

 

Curious. I've been using tinseth, even in hop-bursted beers with mostly late additions or all late additions, and been calculating how much hops to use based on those numbers (and whatever bitterness level I wanted). For instance, for the APA IPA project, I used tinseth, and beersmith gave my 60 minute bittering addion 13 IBUs. All the rest of the hops were at 15, 10, 5 and 0. Now of course I took into account that some IBUs will get into the beer during steeping, but won't be accounted for on beersmith. However, beersmith rated the IBUs in accordance with the recipe's chosen recipe and desired IBUs, and I only had to adjust the bittering charge slightly.

So in reference to late hops additions, when you say

how late are you talking? FO additions only?

Not intending to be confrontational here, but I also can't say that I've personally noticed what you are talking about, so I'm just asking for clarification/more discussion.

cheers!

 

Neither. They estimate based on sensory evaluation.

 

This is a good point, I'm talking sub 5 minute and flameout/whirlpool additions (calculated as 1 minute additions to account for hopstanding somewhat) when being used as significant sources of bittering.

There's an episode of either the Jamil show or brew strong where he talks about using Rager vs Tinseth for these beers and the actual IBU tests done on his Evil Twin beer.

There's also an episode of better brewing radio where some guy adds ~1.5 lbs of Nelson at flameout as the only hop additions, and ends up with something around 100ish measured IBU.

I think I'm going send in some of the latest version of my all-flameout ipa for testing to get some more data.

I think this issue is far more complicated and process(hopstand vs immediate chill, time to chill, kettle dimensions, cooling rate etc) dependent than either of these formulas can even come close to working for.

 

Please make sure we find out the results of this if you do it:

I did make one beer that was all 60 and FO additions, but it wasn't the same thing as your all-flameout. I might have to try that tho. got a recipe or hop schedule? what was your intention for this beer's final product?

 

I'm not even gonna ask.