Calculating IBU from hopped starter

[climateboy]

Hey all--

I've got in the habit of saving extra wort from brewdays for future starters--I pressure can it, and it makes life a lot easier.

Generally, the yeast in the starter has sedimented, and I cold crash and decant before pitching. This brewday, however, the starter has been slow to get going, and I can't forsee it will be ready to decant by pitching time this evening.

I'm brewing a dubbel, and the starter is from a best bitter--it's 1000ml of 35IBU wort. I will likely have to pitch the whole thing into my carboy, which will have 6 gallons of dubbel wort.

The question is, should I worry about the IBU contributions of the starter? Is there a way of calculating it, so I can adjust the IBUs of the dubbel recipe?


Thanks,

CB

 

[climateboy]

bump

 

[Jwood]

I'd be hard pressed to say it would matter much. 1000 mL isn't a large percentage of 6 gallons. I mean if you absolutely wanted to make sure you could just approximate by 95% of the beer being your dubbel IBU's and 5% being your starter IBUs and find what the final is.

Honestly I wouldn't even do that though. It probably won't affect it enough for a persons taste threshold. Your dubbel IBU's will be a fine approximation.

 

[climateboy]

Thanks so much. I looked up other threads on blending and calculated the percentages--basically blending a 6 gallon beer with a .2 gallon beer--you are right, negligible. But you know how it is, at the end of an all-grain brew day, with a beer you have a lot riding on (this will be for my wedding, has some special ingredients), the gremlins come out in your head.

 

[daksin]

If you can cold crash the starter and decant off the spent beer, the contribution will be even smaller.