FWH vs Boil addition

Markok

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While building a recipe, FWH addition creates an IBU estimate. This estimate is significantly higher than the same amount of hops added to a 60 min boil in lieu of the FWH. Why would there be such a significant difference? If I had to guess it seems to me that if there was a difference, the boil version would be higher than the FWH if there would be a difference at all.
 
it might have to do with the first wort hops being in contact with the wort much longer than a 60 minute addition. Because it's added to wort, at say 152F, and then stays in contact as it's brought up to boiling it contributes more perceivable IBUs than straight boil hop additions. maybe probably.
 
What @oliver said. The hops added in a first wort hop addition are going to continue to isomerize during the boil, so it's kinda like adding a few minutes to the boil time.

Personally I don't think a straight multiplier really makes sense. It should be a percentage of the time it takes to go from runoff to boil, which is usually what like 10 minutes? So if the utilization for that "extra" non-boiling time is 50%, it should behave as if it was the IBU of a 60 minute addition and a 70 minute addition averaged.

Currently I believe it's way over estimated, you can see below that somehow the FWH has a higher IBU contribution than if I boiled for over 3 hours.

upload_2020-7-18_9-46-1.png


But the % can be changed manually in the "scale util:" value in the recipe builder, and in the equipment settings.
 
Either way, it's a matter of 1-4 IBU for any recipe, when the margin of error of the ibu formulas we have as an entire industry is 20-30% at best from the actual lab analysis I've seen reported publicly.
 
Either way, it's a matter of 1-4 IBU for any recipe, when the margin of error of the ibu formulas we have as an entire industry is 20-30% at best from the actual lab analysis I've seen reported publicly.
And under normal conditions it takes 5 IBUs for a human to taste the difference. There is beer lore out there that FWH gives smoother bitterness and I use the procedure sometimes but don't worry too much about the IBUs. The calculator and its assumptions give me a good result so I tend to trust it.
 
Thanks for the quick response. Your explanation does make sense and I agree that less than 5 units wouldn’t matter however for my recipe it made a difference of 48 for the 60 min boil and 77 for the FWH addition. That I consider significant.View attachment 10929 View attachment 10930
 

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