Ok, glad you guys had fun with this.
What spurred this was, I was listening to a couple of brewers discussing post boil hops, and how to quantify the bitterness from those hops. It was like watching a mouse try to find a corner in a round room. They apparantly liked what post boil hops had done to the beer, but since there's no real way of quantifying the bitterness from them, they seemed unable or unwilling to use late hops in their own beers.
I began thinking about that. It sounded like most of us. For some reason that one ingredient has us entranced with a bizzar need for a number. How is it we can rely on personal experience, or the advice of others, when it comes to the use of grains or yeast, and their likely flavor contributions. But if it's hops, no way! We must have a formula, even if it's one that we know is highly inaccurate.
In my sarcastic humor I hid my personal opinion in the FAQs. This is me...
"Q: Why not just describe the maltiness of beer using words?" You can substitute Hoppiness for Maltiness
And this is the response I hear from the brewing world
"A: Who let this moron in here?"
When people ask me how many IBUs are in my beers, from now on I think I will answer "I don't know" just hoping that prompts the question "How do you know how bitter it is?"
My recipe software calculates SRM, but I don't think I could tell you the number from memory for any of my beers, without looking. I'm going to apply that same amount of importance to the IBU.
I think every time I hear an IBU debate I will remember the IMF, and see that mouse running in circles.
Glad you guys got a kick out of my ramblings
Topic: IMF "International Maltiness Factor" (Read 4166 times)
