this is the route you take from a private key to an address. <-> means it is reversible, and -> means it only works in one direction:
Private key -> public key -> SHA256 hash -> RIPEMD160 hash <-> Base58 encoding with a checksum

when you are brute forcing you choose a private key in your loop and then compare it with any of the results that you may have, obviously public key is the fastest but in your case since you only have the "address" you need to take it all the way to the end. and since Base58 encoding is reversible it is best to only use its Hash160 result and not do the encoding itself.
besides when you search the "blockchain" itself there are not base58 encodings either. there are only scripts which have that Hash160 result in them as transaction outputs.
so the result is that your loop becomes slightly faster if you skip the last step