Does all hop bitterness taste the same? To find out, we brew two Blonde Ales, each estimated at 40 IBU, where one uses a bunch of low alpha acid hops and the other relies on a smaller amount of high alpha acid hops. The finished beers are then served to blind participants to see if they can tell them apart, and we also have the beers analyzed by White Labs to verify their actual IBUs.
11 thoughts on “The Brülosophy Show: High vs. Low Alpha Acid Hops For Bittering | exBEERiment”
Could the use of the hop spider be reducing the ibu between software and lab results?
I would like to know how much a hop spider actually reduces ibu.
I know it’s extra work for y’all, but transcripts are the only format I consume.
Won’t watch videos.
Your choice. Maybe it’s actually one of the formats they prefer and its not about the work. You can get the transcript from YouTube.
Are there known reasons for why the calculated IBU numbers are so far off from the actual measured ones?
I also usually won’t watch a long and drawn out video. Please go back to written material.
Agreed. But at this point Brulosophy is simply trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Which is not me. But I suppose they have to monetize this somehow, which I understand.
Wait, where’s the article? The recipe?
I like the videos.
To be honest I never watch the videos and as a consequence of them being more common I come to Brulosophy a lot less than I used to. I no longer even have the site bookmarked.
What I don’t like about the videos:
– no information density.
– no skimming and scanning back over an article you read a year or more ago that you want to remind yourself of as you are finally getting around to making that beer you read about
– videos make a very poor and generally unsearchable archive
– Finally, I really don’t like Martin Keen’s presentation style. The videos seem like they are more about him prancing around on camera than about the users of this site learning something. They are truly the most disappointing turn taken in the many years I have followed this site. Maybe it IS about monetizing and maybe that’s why these videos seem like some sort of Tik-Tok drivel.
It’s never too late to right the ship.
Perhaps one option is to paste the results (triangle tests, flavour profiles reported etc), as those would have been recorded outside the video?
Regarding IBU estimation and measurement, the estimations are always high. I think you guys have enough data points now (maybe 6 or so) where you’ve actually sent beer off for IBU measurement and I’d bet that you could compare the data set of estimates with their actual measurements and find that there is a power function that describes the relationship between the software estimates and the actual measurements.
Then again, every beer we encounter in the world is using software estimates, so does an actual accurate measurement of IBUs have any utility??