Hop leafs vs. pellet hops.

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apparatus

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I visited a HBS near Portland, Oregon today. I purchased some ingredients to make a Mirror Pond pale ale clone. I have brewed this once before with a kit from Austin Homebrew. It turned out very good so I took a copy of the recipe with me to the HBS so I could get the ingredients to brew it again.

I have 2 questions though.
1.) Do leaf hops have the same utilization rate as pellet hops? The kit I got from Austin's contained pellet hops, but the guy at the HBS told me he thought I should use leaf hops being I live here in the Northwest and they are readily available. He said there should not be any noticeable difference in utilization but they are much fresher than pellets.

2.) The recipe called for 6lbs. of LME and the guy accidentally gave me 7lbs. He did not charge me for the extra LB. He said go ahed and use it if you want to or throw it out. If I use this should I adjust my hopping rate? The recipe calls for 1oz. cascade for bittering, 1oz. flavoring and 1 oz. dry hop.
I purchased 4oz. of whole leaf hops.
 
Looks like you ran into some good fortune there.

You need to use about 10% more whole hops than pellets. I usually make mine about 1.1-1.2 oz of whole leaf.

Yes, if you use more malt you have to compensate by using more hops.

In your situation I'd use the extra malt for your starter and later for priming.

I'm not a hop nut so I can't help you with the Pale Ale.
 
You also have to compensate for absorption. Whole hops absorb a hell of a lot. Not sure how much, just saying from what I saw when I used whole hops.
 
You will need to adjust for the extra LME as well as the reduced utilization. I'd go with 1.5 oz. bittering and an extra couple quarts of water for absorption. Keep the other two additions the same.

I like pellets for bittering and whole hops for all other additions, but I'm not AR about it.
 

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