IBU help

So, I loaded a pale ale recipe straight from the designer and everything in the BS recipe was spot on but the IBU's were off the chart (99).  Heck it gave me 3 IBU's for a 0 minute addition. Loaded the same recipe into my son in-laws BS and it came out normal (38)  I have been over this a bunch and I can't figure out whats wrong.  By the way it turned out great.  Can somebody make a few (hopefully not obvious) suggestions please.  I've attached a copy of the recipe. Thanks.

Sorry I did not get a chance to comment on your other thread, but I really didn't have time the last few days to chase it down.

In my set up of BS, your 99 IBU dropped to 94 IBU due to the difference in % utilization of my process versus your set up.

From your hop loading, %AA of hops used and time of additions, I can't find anything really wrong with the calculation.  If you go into your equipment profile and click off the "estimate boil hop util into whirlpool", your IBU estimation drops to 86.6.

I am guessing that when you plugged the same recipe (assuming also that you used the same %AA for each of the hops) into your SIL's version of BS that the "normal" of 38 IBU matches the recipe specification.  This may be a matter of process losses and volumes carried through the recipe in his equipment profile versus yours.  Although this would need to be quite a large difference.

I may be missing something else but at a first glance cannot find a glaring issue that would account for the differences.

Stab in the dark here... pellet hops vs. whole leaf hops?

I also tried Rager vs Tinseth, and that dropped ibu down to 77 or so.  It is either a combination of settings or something so obvious that we will all slap our heads and shout 'duh'.

CraigH said:

Heck it gave me 3 IBU's for a 0 minute addition. Loaded the same recipe into my son in-laws BS and it came out normal (38) 

Click to expand...

The first part is a clue that points to your equipment profile. If you have whirlpool or stand time AND the "Estimate Hop Boil Util..." box checked, then that will add to the IBUs calculated. In this case, it's pretty minimal.

There's a lot of hops in this recipe, so the higher IBU calculation makes complete sense. Could the Global Options (Options > Bitterness) on your SIL's version could be different than yours?

Did you send the file, like you did with us, or did the recipe get re-entered on his version? If the latter, again check the equipment profile to make sure they match. I changed your loss to trub from 0.1 to 1 and got a 38 IBU reduction. Still not in the ballpark of the change you saw, but plausible.

Finally, if you re-entered the recipe, perhaps a hop was omitted or given an incorrect weight? I changed the FWH Amarillo from 1 oz  to 0.1 and it was 38 IBU as you described.

Kevin58 said:

Stab in the dark here... pellet hops vs. whole leaf hops?

Click to expand...

May not have been it for him, but that it for me - trying to learn BeerSmith, and was starting with entering the next recipe I want to try.  I was coming in at 7 IBUs higher.  Adjusting to leaf from pellet, I got down to within 2.