Kit lacking sufficient sugar?

I helped a friend brew an Arrogant Bastard clone kit (Brewer's Best Imperial IPA) today. The instructions said it would be OG 1.081-86, but when I punched the ingredients into brewtarget, the calculated OG was more like 1.065. Also, the amount of hopping they recommended was insane, something like 2oz of 14.2% Columbus (which worked out to over 100 IBUs). Is this normal for kits, to be off so wildly?

I have never done a kit--I usually make my own recipes, and got started out of a clone book, so I always had to buy the ingredients I needed severally. In retrospect I guess it might have been a lower volume than a 5 gallon batch, but I reined in their hopping and ended up with fully 2 oz left over. I am looking forward to the batch, but wow, I am not used to kits.

Were you doing a full boil? 2oz of 14.2% Columbus would only be ~100 IBU if you're doing a 5 gallon boil. In the 2.5 gallon boil the instructions call for it should be about half that and around 75 IBU for all of the hops (should be 2oz at 60min, 1oz at 30min and 1oz at 15min or later I believe).

Agree about the OG though; based on the ingredients (6.6lbs LME, 2 lbs DME, 1 lb Crystal 80L, .5 lbs Victory, .25 lbs Carapils) I'd expect more like a 1.065-1.070 as well.

Yeah, we were taking advantage of my buddy's new turkey fryer So, happily, full boil! I didn't even think to make a hardware profile for a partial boil; that would have revealed the difference in hopping.

Well, he's got lots of spare hops now :fro:

I'm bottling the same kit tomorrow so I'll keep you posted in 1, 2, and 3 weeks also to let you know what I think of it. I'm dry hopping with 1 oz centennial and 1 oz citra. The samples tasted really amazing.