EBU for multihop brews

[Tibbsey]

Good evening,

As this is my first post I will just briefly make my excuses - I had a brief foray into kit brewing a couple of years ago, then on discovering Elder flowers in the garden this spring a bit of wine making has re-sparked my interest, resulting in a current stock of 5 gallons of wine of 3 types, and a further kit brew. I have decided however that I want to try my hand at all grain brewing, so have accumulated the kit I need to make my first brew.

I want to start simplish so I have opted to take a stab at a clone of Uley Old Spot using [url=viewtopic.php?p=72582#p72582]the recipe from the thread "Normans Real Ale Almanac Recipes" on here[/url] since its an ale local to me (when I'm home!) and its one that both I and SWMBO really enjoy!

However it appears to use two different copper hops and however hard I search I can't seem to find anywhere that tells me how to adjust the hop calculations to take into account the use of more than one type of hop - flicking through Graham Wheeler's book has given several other recipes that also use more than one copper hop, but again no guidance for adjusting the weight of hops is given (that I can see!)

As usual I am probably just making life hard for myself, but I don't want to start at a disadvantage! Any help greatly appreciated!

Thanks very much
Tibbsey

PS has anyone used this or any other Old Spot recipe? Google has told me over and over again that ADDLED has because his signature flooded all results, may have to drop a PM

[Froggit]

You could use one of the many beer programs available.
There is the beer engine available in the calculators tab above also there is Beersmith and Brewmate, just google them.

They all help you build your recipes and calculate the EBU's automatically!

[Tibbsey]

Thanks Froggit, I have downloaded Beersmith as it was the program used to derive the recipe - though not sure if its not just given me more numbers (and a lot lot more!) to play with!

In answer to my question, it looks to be that when using more than one hop, the total EBU is the sum of all of the EBU calculations for each hop when calculated as if they are the only one - hence working out the weight required of each is a touch tricky, but the rule of thumb seems to be to divide the total EBU by the number of hops and go from there. eg, you want an EBU of 32 and want to use 2 hops, so you calculate 16 for each hop

I think perhaps it would have been useful to have noted the AA levels assumed when the recipe was written, but hey ho. Think I will have a small play, but ultimately try not to mess about with the numbers too much until I get some idea of the performance of me and my equipment

EDIT: on reflection those assumed AA levels would have been the default Beersmith ones now wouldn't they!