amount of hops in Brewer's Best Smoked Porter?

I'm in the middle of my boil for my Smoked Porter and found something interesting. I was messing around with beercalculus, which made me check the amount of hops for this recipie. In the "ingredients" section of the directions, it lists 1.5oz Bittering hops (Cascade), and 0.5oz of Aroma hops (Mt. Hood). However, looking at the packaging of the actual hops in the kit, there's the same amount of Cascade and Mt. Hood, and they're even both labeled as 0.5oz on each package. So did the kit come with not enough Cascade, or is it a typo in the directions? This is only my third batch, so I don't have enough experience to tell which amount seems right. Any ideas?

EDIT: just ran the recipie through beercalculus again, and it looks like if I were to use 1.5oz of the Cascade, the IBU's would just about match up to the specs in the directions. So, it looks like the kit is screwed up and only gave me 1/3 of the amount of Cascade I needed. right?

anyone? just wondering what to expect. is 7 IBU going to make that much of a difference vs 12-18 IBU?

I emailed Brewer's Best about the discrepancy, curious to see how they're gonna handle it. I'll post what they say

do the hops have an Alpha Acid (aa%) listed on them? This will help to calculate the IBUs better...it's possible that the kit came with a smaller amount of hops to compensate (though maybe not likely).

In either case, you'll be fine. 7 IBU is low for a porter...if you're really concerned about it, you can toss the cascade and willamette together in at the beginning of the boil to up the IBUs to where they "should" be. Though if you're already in the middle of your boil, it's probably too late for that.

I wouldn't fret it too much.

The Cascade was listed as 5.0 AA on the package, and the Mt. Hood as 5.5, which is was I used in beercalc (had to change both from their default numbers by about 0.5, btw).

It's fermenting away as we speak, so it's too late to change anything, just hope for the best. I just wanted confirmation that something was indeed off, and it wasn't me being retarded with the math or something. Thanks for the response

If anyone wants to check me on the beercalc numbers, here's the recipe:
http://www.brewersbestkits.com/pdf/1033_Smoked Porter.pdf

Thanks again

seven9st_surfer said:

anyone? just wondering what to expect. is 7 IBU going to make that much of a difference vs 12-18 IBU?

I emailed Brewer's Best about the discrepancy, curious to see how they're gonna handle it. I'll post what they say

Click to expand...

Yes, 7 vs 12 isn't noticeable, but 7 vs 18 is. You can make a bittering tea by boiling 1/2 oz of high AA hops in two quarts of water for 60 minutes. Don't worry about how much it boils down as long as there is a quart+ left.

david_42 said:

Yes, 7 vs 12 isn't noticeable, but 7 vs 18 is. You can make a bittering tea by boiling 1/2 oz of high AA hops in two quarts of water for 60 minutes. Don't worry about how much it boils down as long as there is a quart+ left.

Click to expand...

That's a really good idea, I might just do that. When would I add the tea? Just mix it in the bottling bucket in a few weeks, or go ahead and add it to the primary now?

Brewer's Best is awesome. I just got an email response from them, and they said they realized that they sent out a few kits with the wrong amount of hops. Told me to keep brewing the kit I have, and they want to send me a free replacement kit. They just kept my business.

This recepie leads to a wonderful porter... and yes, Brewers Best seems to be a fine company.