Gravity and bitterness units

[timbo41]

The beersmith blog had an article about putting bittering hops in at 30 mins for smoother bittering with the obvious proviso that you have to up amount. Like yourself Guy I rarely brew beyond 40 ibu,,just can't say I really like hyper bitter brews.but to be honest I normally buy a 100 gram pack of whatever takes my fancy and use the lot..juggle the amounts to get target ratio the put rest in really late,whilst chilling or as dry hop

[darkonnis]

Excellent points, Cooky.

So it seems as though about 50 IBUs is the most a wort can hold. You're saying anything much over this just boils off?

That's good news. Means I shan't bother trying a 60 or 70 IBU brew.

However, as my taste buds tell me 50 IBUs is too much for the approx 5% ales I usually brew, it's all a bit academic.

About 35 IBUs seems right for me, so I now need to work out how to get loads of hop flavour but keep the bitterness down. Late additions etc is probably the way forward, but I'll have to try a few brews to see how it goes.

Oh dear, this research is so tiresome!!!

Guy

Not quite, I'll clarify:
No matter how many hops you put in at the 1 hour mark, you won't go far above 50 IBUS (50 is for all intents and purposes) to go above this limit you need to use your 30 - 0 additions which is why the likes of brew dog use four and five times as many hops as a normal brewery. It can be done and the guy that got 130 IBUS (crazy nordic fella) used 1kg (23L brew) of columbus a minute from the end and then chilled with it in. The 130 IBUS was lab tested, not guestimated with software.

Hope that makes a bit more sense.
Cooky