A few questions about a recipe

So I just got a new recipe from Norther Brewer, the black IPA 5-gallon extract kit, and a few questions for anyone who knows:

- The recipe calls for only dealing with 2.5 gallons through the boil, adding 3 gallons of water to the primary - can I adjust the recipe and boil 5 gallons instead of 2.5, or should I stick with the recipe and only boil 2.5 gallons?

- Dry hopping - never done it before. The recipe calls for fermenting for 1-2 weeks, adding dryhops 5 days before bottling; I plan to ferment in the primary for a month - do I still add the hops 5 days before bottling, or sooner?

Much appreciate any help!!

1. Boil as much as you can- the bigger the boil, the beer. No need to adjust anything, except for the volume in the boil.

2. Add the dryhops 5-7 days before packaging. I normally leave my beer in the fermenter for about 10-14 days, then add the dryhops and package after 5-7 days. A month in primary is a long, long time. No harm will come, I'm sure, but I'm not sure why you'd do that on purpose.

You can definitely boil the full 5 gallons, but you will need to adjust the hop additions because you will get better utilization.
Add the dry hops just like the recipe states.

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but if the recipe calls for a 2.5 gallon boil and I go with 5 gallons instead, should I divide the hops by half or double the amount I use? Using double the water means there'll be more in solution, so I'd think I'd have to cut the amount in half - is this right?

xmacro said:

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but if the recipe calls for a 2.5 gallon boil and I go with 5 gallons instead, should I divide the hops by half or double the amount I use? Using double the water means there'll be more in solution, so I'd think I'd have to cut the amount in half - is this right?

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Make the recipe as written. If you're making 5 gallons of beer, it's still 5 gallons in the end. You don't lower the amount of chocolate chips in a cookie recipe if you add them later. For a 5 gallon batch, follow a 5 gallon batch recipe and don't change anything.

Hops utilization is NOT impacted by gravity, and even if you do get slightly better hops utilization that's fine because it's an IPA. Boil size impacts hops utilization due to topping up, but it's not all that much. It used to be thought that wort gravity impacted hops utilization, but since 2008 or so that has been proven to be untrue.

In some very low IBU beers (say, a 15 IBU cream ale), you may want to consider really thinking about bittering hops since a few IBU difference may be noticeable. But not in an IPA/APA/American amber/etc.