Hop Flavor Radar
What your hops actually taste like, beyond the IBU number
IBU tells you how bitter your beer is. But 40 IBU of Cascade and 40 IBU of Hallertau taste completely different. One is grapefruity and piney, the other is floral and spicy. The hop flavor radar shows the shape of your hop character, not just the intensity.
As you add hops to your recipe, the radar updates in real time across 9 flavor axes: citrus, tropical fruit, stone fruit, berry, floral, grassy, herbal, spice, and resin/pine. It's useful for comparing hop bills, understanding substitutions, and checking whether your hop character matches the style you're aiming for.
How We Calculate It
Each hop variety has a flavor profile across all 9 axes (sourced from published hop descriptors). Each addition is then weighted by two things: dose (grams per liter) and aroma retention, how much flavor survives the brewing process.
Aroma Retention by Addition Type
Dry hops retain ~80% of volatile aroma compounds because there's no heat to drive them off.
Whirlpool hops retain 50–100% depending on temperature and time. Cooler, shorter stands preserve more.
Boil additions lose aroma exponentially. A 60-minute boil retains only about 5%. Bitterness goes up, flavor fades.
First wort & mash hops retain almost nothing (5–8%). They're for bitterness, not flavor.
The Perceptual Ceiling
The model uses a sigmoidal intensity curve. Doubling your dry hops doesn't double the displayed flavor. There's a practical limit to perceivable aroma intensity. This prevents the radar from blowing out to unrealistic values on heavily hopped recipes.
The overall intensity approaches a ceiling of 5 as total hop weight increases. Diminishing returns, just like in real life.
What It's Good For
Comparing hop bills: swap Galaxy for Simcoe and instantly see the profile shift from tropical to resin.
Checking style fit: a NEIPA should light up the tropical and citrus axes. If your radar shows mostly herbal, your hop bill might need rethinking.
Understanding additions: see why moving hops from a 60-minute boil to a dry hop completely changes the flavor character, even though the same hop variety is used.
Where This Comes From
This is an original model. There's no published standard for predicting hop flavor profiles. The aroma retention factors are informed by general hop oil volatility research and brewing science principles. It's not a lab measurement, and it can't predict exactly what a beer will taste like. But it gives a useful comparative signal for comparing hop bills and understanding how additions affect flavor.
See all the numbers come together in real time.
See this in the recipe builder