It was one study, done poorly, and has since been roundly disproved. It doesn’t contribute to harshness in bittering.
I have not studied it, but I have found a correlation. Admittedly, correlation is not causation, but I still use lower cohumulone hops for smoother bittering. Works for me.
Fair enough. God knows that if there is any authority in this place drawn from experience and respect it lies with you Denny. And maybe a couple of other people. But, I really wish people weren’t so sanctimonious about high cohumulone levels being the end all be all of what hop you choose for bittering. At best it’s a preference, and at its worst (and lately the most common encounter for me) it’s a “scientifically verifiable fact” asserted by people who haven’t done their research. It’s a claim. Nothing about it has been verified.
its probably just better to use different bittering hops and then figure out which one(s) you like 
I’m not sure what the cohumulone levels of Columbus, Chinook, or Magnum are anymore (i cared at one point) but I do know I prefer using the first two as a bittering hop in IPAs and the latter for less aggressive styles like ambers and apa.
I eat cohumulone for breakfast.
How many people have this chart?
http://hopschart.com/Not sure when it was last updated but kind-a useful.
Wow. I must have missed something. What brought this on?
Columbus and Chinook are fairly high, Magnum is fairly low.
I have found from extensive experimentation that cohumulone level is an excellent predictor of the smoothness of the bittering addition’s IBUs. Yes, there are some exceptions, but a hop with coh in the 40s is going to be harsh compared to one in the 20s almost every time. Notice that I stated “bittering addition” - you can always get a “harsh” hop to smooth out by using it or FWH or late additions.
Wow. I must have missed something. What brought this on?[/quote]
Ha, no one around here, really. Was just bringing some of my outside stress into the forum. I work in a brewery and you get a lot of loud mouthed idiots trafficking their hackneyed knowledge at you when they hear about what you do. Most recently there’ve been several of such people ranting and raving about how high cohumulones levels are simply unacceptable in bittering hops.
As always, at the end of the day it’s about preference. But, certainly, if someone wants to create an absolute they need to do it with hard facts. I guess that was my beef. There are several people around here that work in breweries if I remember right so I’m sure you guys can chime in on this. As soon as people catch wind of what you do a common reaction is suddenly they’re trying to measure their knowledge against yours which inevitably decays into bullshitting. I am the first person to claim ignorance when I feel like I’m overstepping the boundaries of my knowledge (better to claim it than to demonstrate it right?). And my knowledge is extremely limited. But, so many of these idiots just talk and talk and talk and they are wrong and wrong and wrong again. And being passive-aggressive as I am I have to come here to vent rather than confronting them head on. So there.
I am not going to get into great detail, but you are waving a huge stick here.
Especially if you work in the beer industry you really need to do some fact checking before declaring, debunking something as well documented as Cohum levels. I don’t know where you found (one?) article but you need to start looking far outside of your circle to find the reality here Hopp for example look into the MBAA (Master Brewers Assn of the Americas) there are way too many white papers by brewing scientists and MBAA tasting committees that will more than disagree with your broad statement along with myself.
My experience has more than agreed with hop producers such as hopstiener, hopunion, Japanese and many European other hop/brewing communities and assn’s especially the Germans all agree that high cohum is attributed to “harsh-aggressive” bittering properties this is over a century old known fact. Can you use high cohum hops in a recipe or as a FWH or late hop, sure. But it is not appropriate for bittering in many recipes.
If you don’t believe us or the brewing populace/industry as a whole do a simple test for yourself.
A. Brew a simple APA around 1.050 and bitter only with Chinook.
B. Brew a simple APA around 1.050 and bitter only with Simcoe/Amarillo
Apples and Oranges.
Example (A.) will exhibit harsh or aggressive bittering properties and the Simcoe/ Amarillo beer will exhibit smooth bittering properties. Absolutely no mistaking the difference between a high (40+% cohum) and low (<20% cohum) hop.
[quote=“ITsPossible”]I am not going to get into great detail, but you are waving a huge stick here.
Especially if you work in the beer industry you really need to do some fact checking before declaring, debunking something as well documented as Cohum levels. I don’t know where you found (one?) article but you need to start looking far outside of your circle to find the reality here Hopp for example look into the MBAA (Master Brewers Assn of the Americas) there are way too many white papers by brewing scientists and MBAA tasting committees that will more than disagree with your broad statement along with myself.
My experience has more than agreed with hop producers such as hopstiener, hopunion, Japanese and many European other hop/brewing communities and assn’s especially the Germans all agree that high cohum is attributed to “harsh-aggressive” bittering properties this is over a century old known fact. Can you use high cohum hops in a recipe or as a FWH or late hop, sure. But it is not appropriate for bittering in many recipes.
If you don’t believe us or the brewing populace/industry as a whole do a simple test for yourself.
A. Brew a simple APA around 1.050 and bitter only with Chinook.
B. Brew a simple APA around 1.050 and bitter only with Simcoe/Amarillo
Apples and Oranges.
Example (A.) will exhibit harsh or aggressive bittering properties and the Simcoe/ Amarillo beer will exhibit smooth bittering properties. Absolutely no mistaking the difference between a high (40+% cohum) and low (<20% cohum) hop.[/quote]
Thank you. I’ll definitely take a run at the APA test and poke around for more information. This is exactly the kind of substantiated response I was hoping for… it put me in my place a little more than I’d like, but rereading how I posted this I was kind of asking for it. I’ll try to find the one study that I’m referring to, but it is a little over a half a century old (1940’s) and it was done with bias. It’s the most common launchpad for this topic. Damnit, I wish I had it on hand. I do know some people that have gone through fermentation programs so maybe I can ask them to point me in the right direction regarding doing better research. Thanks again for taking the time to hammer this out.
I used to keep up with this sort of thing as well, and now find myself working on preference and not paying much attention to the “numbers”.
I like Magnum and used it forever - readily available and cheap to boot! Then, went on a NB bittering kick. I never used Chinook very often but did so recently and became an instant fan.
In short, I fall on the side of “use what you like” as well.
