Most popular Rager , Garetz , or Tinseth

[RabMaxwell]

Been using Promash for 6 months now & compared some brews against the commercial version. With my setup i have found that Rager falls far to short Garetz is a little over the top & Tinseth is a little short. I need to get somewhere in the middle of Garetz & Tinseth.It's hard to believe how large a difference there is between them all. Cheers

[RabMaxwell]

I put down other as none hit the correct EBU with my setup. I love using promash now saves a lot of time. I may have to experiment with Tinseth but add an extra ebu or two to my recipes until i hit it correct. Cheers

[tubby_shaw]

I use Rager, always have, can't tell you why
As I don't get hung up on trying to exactly emulate a particular commercial beer, I aim for a style, it doesn't seem to affect me.
If I brew a recipe and it seems overly or underly bitter I will just make a note in my log and adjust quantities next time

[steve_flack]

Funny thing bitterness. It's often been noted that a hop utilisation is different in a larger vessel than it is in a 5 gallon brewpot. Commercial breweries generally get better extraction rates than homebrewers yet none of the formulas seem to take this 'size effect' into account. My guess it has something to do with how much freedom to move around a brew pot the hops have but quite how you'd build that into a formula is another matter.

In the end the formulas are all just guesses. They're more accurate than assuming you get the same utilisation in every beer but basically pick the one that works for you and go with it.

[maxashton]

any italian chef will tell you freedom of movement for pasta in the pot makes a huge difference to the finished product.

adds up

[bitter_dave]

I use 'wheeler', i.e. the utilisation based on his books (20%). I know he was supposed to under-estimate hop utilisation, but I now have a rough idea of how bitter, say, 30 IBUs in a 1040 beer is based on my set up and his equation, so changing now would mean losing my frame of reference.

[mysterio]

I use Tinseth, which seems to be about right for my tastes. I tend to agree it falls a little short so I calculate on 3 or 4 extra IBUs. In the end it's guesswork, mostly. You have to brew the same thing a couple of times, adjusting the bitterness slightly, to get exactly what you want.