El Pistolero

Recipes 

Yep, an additional gallon of 170 degree water. Do that, and steep your grains for 30 minutes at around 155 (heat water to ~160, then remove from heat and toss in grains).

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[/I] Up Next - Hobgoblin
After That - Czech Pilsner
Primary - Humboldt Hop Rod (4/24)
Primary - NOT Wheat AG SNCA (5/5)
Secondary -
Conditioning - SNCA Clone (3/3),

Rhoobarb

Recipes 

Sorry, I missed that this was an extract recipe. I think El Pistolero is correct; I don't think your gravity is to blame. If you were looking for a hoppier flavor - typical IPA - then I would up the hops, particularly the Cascades. And I think you were headed in the right direction by dry-hopping.

When I was doing extract based recipes, it seemed to me that I could never get the hop profile I really desired. Then, I began to up the amount of hops suggested and that seemed to do the trick! Again, just my opinion on it.

And, yes, sparging helps, IMO. It took me about two years of brewing extract recipes before I read it somewhere and decided to try it! There's some good reading about it here, here and here!

It looks like you did everything right. If the yeast was a packet of dry yeast that came with the kit, then I would suggest using a liquid yeast next time, either White Labs or Wyeast.

ERR

Recipes 

It sounds like maybe my recipe wasn't really what I expected it to be. Thanks for all the help, though. Now onto my next batch!

AlaskaAl(e)

Recipes 

Not to shoot these guys down but I can't see that not sparging only 1 1/2 pounds of grain would make all that much difference either way. I, myself, choose not to sparge my steeped grains because I just haven't seen any real benefit (besides, I usually add a little extra malt extract anyway). Your hop bill is probably the most influential part of this particular recipe (not much in the way of grains) so I would look there first to work it all out.