Double-deformation isothermal tests and multipass continuous-cooling hot torsion tests were used to study the evolution of austenite microstructure under isothermal and nonisothermal hot deformation of a Nb microalloyed steel. Thanks to these tests and with the assistance of microstructural characterization, it has been verified that norecrystallization temperature (T nr ) approximately corresponds to the temperature where recrystallization starts to be incomplete during rolling. An accurate method to estimate the recrystallized fraction during hot rolling from stress-strain data and with no need of metallographic studies is proposed. The results of this method have been successfully compared to metallographic measurements, the values of non-isothermal fractional 3 softening and the accumulated stress measured in the plots of mean flow stress (MFS) versus the inverse of temperature. A remarkable austenite grain refinement occurs in the first hot rolling passes after reheating. If the effect of grain size on recrystallization and precipitation is taken into account, the correlation of isothermal and continuous cooling tests is better understood.