Italian Pilsner

I guess it comes down to which calculator I want to trust. The brewfather app is giving me about 65% which aligns with Brad's Smith's numbers. I will look for some alternate calculators and see if I can find more of a consensus.

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The very real potential exists for NO calculators to be "correct".
Very true. It's basically just a number that your palate has to adjust to right? For me I guess it's dialing it in to where 37 IBUs tastes like 37 IBUs to me even if the actual figure is higher or lower.
 
The boys over at aha are advising me to go with the lower figure for utilization.
 
Does utilization with respect to elevation pertain directly and confidently to pellet hops, or only to whole/leaf/plug related types?
I would assume to all hops since it’s based on boil temperature. Whole hops get about 10% less utilization than pellets in general due to structure.
 
I would assume to all hops since it’s based on boil temperature. Whole hops get about 10% less utilization than pellets in general due to structure.

The 10% thing is fantasy.

But I'm now fully buying that the older Guertz method for elevation adjustment is off by a bunch, and the chart you posted in #21 to this thread is much closer to the proper way to go here.
 
The 10% thing is fantasy.

But I'm now fully buying that the older Guertz method for elevation adjustment is off by a bunch, and the chart you posted in #21 to this thread is much closer to the proper way to go here.
Why do you say it's fantasy that whole cones have 10% less utilization of alpha acids compared to pellets?
 
Why do you say it's fantasy that whole cones have 10% less utilization of alpha acids compared to pellets?

For one, because Tinsith (who never once tested a pellet hop) stated that for pellets "All bets are off" (meaning with regard to his research and IBU's calculation formula). For another, if you look up the dissertation titled "What's Your IBU", by Michael L. Hall, Ph.D many of Tinseth's competitors have ideas here that are nowhere near a factor of 10% (or 1.1). Mosher says the factor is 1.33. Noonan says it scales from 1.0 to 1.5. Garetz had 1.1, but only from 10 to 30 minutes into the boil, else unity. But at a major hops symposium held in Germany a few years ago a guy named Christopher S. Hamilton, Ph.D, at Hillsdale College gave a pellet hops utilization presentation that put a fork into the presumptions of all of these guys. And he found that pellet hops deliver nigh-on all of the IBU's they are ever going to deliver by about 40 minutes into the boil, as opposed to by about 90 minutes for the various of whole hop derivations. And he also found that within only a few minutes of boiling a pellet hop has already delivered a rather huge percentage chunk of its total potential IBU's, whereas a whole hop derivation is hardly getting started.
 
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For one, because Tinsith (who never once tested a pellet hop) stated that for pellets "All bets are off" (meaning with regard to his research and IBU's calculation formula). For another, if you look up the dissertation titled "What's Your IBU", by Michael L. Hall, Ph.D many of Tinseth's competitors have ideas here that are nowhere near a factor of 10% (or 1.1). Mosher says the factor is 1.33. Noonan says it scales from 1.0 to 1.5. Garetz had 1.1, but only from 10 to 30 minutes into the boil, else unity. But at a major hops symposium held in Germany a few years ago a guy named Christopher S. Hamilton, Ph.D, at Hillsdale College gave a pellet hops utilization presentation that put a fork into the presumptions of all of these guys. And he found that pellet hops deliver all of the IBU's they are ever going to deliver by about 40 minutes into the boil, as opposed to by about 90 minutes for the various of whole hop derivations. And he also found that within only a few minutes of boiling a pellet hop has already delivered a rather huge percentage chunk of its total potential IBU's, whereas a whole hop derivation is hardly getting started.
I guess my question relates to the efficiency of alpha acids from the hops being isomerized through the boiling process, not the theoretical calculations of IBUs via calculation using the methods of Tinseth vs Rager vs others. One IBU is defined as 1 mg iso-alpha acids per L of beer, which is measured chemically via mass spectrometry or gas chromatography, which makes it an empirical observation, as opposed to a theoretical calculation utilizing a recipe calculator (or self calculations). It has been shown empirically that because a hop pellet has been processed and about 10% of non-bittering hop material removed (in T90 pellets, not T45), the lupulin glands (and associated alpha acids) are more readily isomerized than a hop cone, where the lupulin glands are still physically attached to the bracts and bracteoles of the cone, making isomerization of alpha acids ~10% less efficient. YMMV
 
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There's an altitude calculator built into the recipe builder.... When they implemented it I had to adjust all my recipes, they were coming out too bitter! You put your altitude in and the software calculates the IBUs
Which software? I use beersmith 2 which doesn’t have that feature.
 

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