India Pale Ales, whether British or American in style, are perfect thirst quenchers for the scorching summer months. Hop flavors and aromas dominate this style, but unfortunately when it comes to hops, homebrewers tend to worry about only one thing: IBUs—International Bittering Units. At best, I find IBUs to be guide posts—the amusement park kind that tell you Rome supposedly is 2,502 miles from where you’re standing—rather than true road maps to crafting a wonderfully hoppy beer. Hopping your homebrew appropriately comes from experience, not some indicator you can’t even calculate without a complicated formula and the help of a computer.

International Bittering Units are the accepted hop bitterness standard of the brewing industry. While homebrewers may rely on Homebrewing Units—HBU, calculated by multiplying the ounces of each hop addition by the variety’s alpha acid content—I’ve never found them to be useful because I take my bitterness cues from commercial examples, which tend to list their hop flavoring contributions in IBUs. BeerSmith and Beer Calculus propose to figure your IBUs with the click of a few buttons—based on the Tinseth Model of calculating IBUs, which you could summate yourself with a few more strokes of your scientific calculator—but do you really know whether your beer is 30 or 40 IBUs when you taste it? The crux of both IBUs and HBUs lies in the hop utilization of your brewing system, which is so individual, it essentially renders any specific discussion of bittering units moot. Utilization is the rate at which hop alpha acids isomerize, or change in chemical structure, to dissolve their flavor and bittering properties in your wort. Depending on wort composition, specific gravity, vigor of your boil, even the age and variety of your hops, utilization will change accordingly. Regardless of what you’re brewing to keep cool this summer, don’t let IBUs dictate your recipe creation.

Instead, use your senses and your overall homebrewing experience to craft delightful hop-forward beers. Hopping your beer appropriately requires a sensitive touch that gradually develops the more you brew—what may seem like good, interesting hop choices on your third batch may not be what you would use if you were to brew that beer again as your thirtieth batch. Studying hop descriptions certainly will help you get an idea of what your choice(s) will contribute to your wort, but you should also supplement any general hop guide with your personal impressions of each variety so you know what you like and don’t like for future reference. Homebrewing consists of a lot of trial and error, if you haven’t noticed already, but thorough note taking, particularly regarding hop profiles, will allow you to eventually craft perfectly hoppy beers. In addition, envisioning the hop profile you want your beer to have is more important than aiming for a particular IBU level. Each hop variety is unique and different hopping techniques impart your beer with different hop characteristics, so the final flavor combinations are endless. Also, bitterness levels are not always the same—two different IPAs with 70 IBUs each may express completely different bitterness profiles depending on the hops and how they were used. IBUs don’t matter nearly as much as your vision for your beer’s hop profile.

As you plan your next hoppy beer to quench your thirst for the rest of the summer, don’t get stuck on supposed IBU levels. Thinking critically about your hop additions—variety, amount, and method—will do more for your homebrew than any computer program can. Knowing your hops and how best to use them will take time, but careful note taking along the way will help tremendously. Focus on tangible characteristics, namely hop flavor and aroma, rather than vague approximations of bitterness levels when crafting hoppy beers.