Which Bitterness Units do you use??

[JohnQ]

Which of the Bitterness Unit do people refer to when referring to the IBU's?

Just entered my version of hopped up Summer Ale derived from Kyle's Summer Ale (mine somehow seems to fit the English IPA BCJP guidelines) and the IBU's according to the brewblog calculator is going to be different depending on the scale used.  I'd just like to know which one everyone uses so I'm speaking the same language when I say it's supposed to have between 69-79 IBU's depending on the scale. Also the calculator gives an 'Average' but it seems to be a different 'Average' in the Recipe Calculator than the Bitterness Calculator.  It looks like the Bitterness Calculator ignores one of the formulas when calculating the average, which only confuses me more, because the average is what's used by the Calculator to determine where the recipe fits in the BCJP guidelines, but if it's different than the scale that you choose, what then?

JW

[Richard]

This won't be a popular answer, but I've literally given up on bittering units calculations. I go with hop-schedules that have worked well in similar gravity beers, and to hell with the numbers.

In a pinch, I'll use tinseth for dialling in, but that's just because it's the one I always used before.

If you're a stovetop guy, you get a massive difference in actual IBU from the size of the boil (bigger is better), the degree of the boil (I now leave my lid partially on to keep the boil violent, makes a huge difference), and how free the hops are (if you must use a hop-bag, make it a big one).

Cue comment from Kyle re: Quality Control

[Kyle]

I use the default BeerTools one, but with a grain of salt as Richard mentions is important.

[Gil Breau]

I now leave my lid partially on to keep the boil violent, makes a huge difference

I wonder if setting up your pot with a steam blowoff (just a small, plugable hole really) would be enough of an escape route for DMS or not?

[pliny]

Promash uses Rager as the default but I think you can change it
Beertools uses Rager as the default but I think you can change it
Beersmith provides Tinseth as a default but you can change the scale to Rager or Garetz if you want. I use Beersmith and use the default.

It really depends on what you want to accomplish. It might be a trial and error thing.
Invariably, not all recipes with note which scale they use.

The Pope -> Jamil <- uses Rager.

You might be brewing a traditional boch with an OG of 1.070 and you plunk in the hops and the different scales with give you different results.
Rager--------41.8
Garetz-------29.0
Mosher------32.5
Tinseth------34.0
Daniels------42.0

It's the same thing with the grain bill. Different softwares will give you different OG estimates.

But the most important thing is that it's not the calculations that make the beer; it's you. If you want bitterness (and I suspect you do based on all the IPAs you brought over) then maybe you should try the same recipe a few times with variations and see what you like and note it. If you like more flavor and aroma, dial down the hops. I don't know about you but I drink most of the beer I make so I make adjustments almost everytime.