My IBUs are way too low. Not sure what I am doing wrong??

Paul Schiele

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My IBUs are all over the map. Sometimes when I'm creating a new recipe they are what I want. I'm editing a recipe today and my IBUs are way to low. I looked around for a setting to tweak buy can't manage to get them to make sense. I feel like I'm missing a setting in my profile.

Thanks,
Paul

Example is my current amber ale recipe -
upload_2020-11-4_21-26-50.png

upload_2020-11-4_21-25-37.png
 

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  • upload_2020-11-4_21-23-27.png
    upload_2020-11-4_21-23-27.png
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Possibly the boil temp needs to be filled in? I don't think you need to put in the utilisation percentage for boil as that should default to 100%, but it may need an actual number, instead of that suggested 212F.
 
Looks like the temperature is grayed out
 
I'll also add to the above and say to be sure and use the proper bittering units for your hops and not the generic number the software gives.
I have played around a lot with hop utilization and have gone down to 75% and felt that was a hair to low giving me more ibu's than I wanted. I have since adjusted up to 80% and find that to be a pretty good setting for my brewing equipment. I'm also over 5000 feet above sea level so my boiling point is different and I think that lower boiling point also is a factor in hop utilization, but I could be wrong.
This is what works for me.
 
Are the pre and post boil numbers correct?
 
That's way too low for that hop bill. What do you have for altitude in your profile? I brew at around 6,000 feet and before the elevation setting came around, was getting beers less bitter than they should be. Of course, I never missed by the degree yours is missing. What's your boil size - are you accidentally off by a couple orders of magnitude somewhere? Your IBUs look to be off by at least that much.
 
That's way too low for that hop bill. What do you have for altitude in your profile? I brew at around 6,000 feet and before the elevation setting came around, was getting beers less bitter than they should be. Of course, I never missed by the degree yours is missing. What's your boil size - are you accidentally off by a couple orders of magnitude somewhere? Your IBUs look to be off by at least that much.
 

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  • JRB Amber Ale - 11 Gallon - SA05 Ale - Beer Recipe - Brewer's Friend.pdf
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I have 0 feet in this profile. It's strange. I send a copy to support as well but have attached my recipe. I played around with adding boil temps and forcing 100% utilization. Probably user error but I noticed this behavior on another recipe too.
 
Did you check the hop utilization setting in your My Inventory page?
 
Can you give me a link to the recipe? When I look into your account, I see this:
7C85BB06-243E-4D5E-A653-0E4E5A7C3088.jpeg


And in that recipe, there simply aren’t enough hops to get a bigger IBU measurement in an 11.5 post boil size batch.
 
Also, in your screenshot you have the hops utilization set for 1%- that’s a huge issue. Take that out of your profile, and it will be corrected.
Here’s where I mean:
EA89A430-DC40-46A2-9722-E0E34B467919.jpeg


Remove that (I’d suggest the default for now) and you should get better predictions.
 
Yeah, I saw the 1% utilization as well. That's about two orders of magnitude low and as Yooper said, should correct the issue.
 

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