chinook hops?

hello, i just poped open a brewers best bold series california style imperial pale ale. it has 2 different types of chinook hops in it, chinook bittering hops and chinook finishing hops, both packaged by ID carlson, can anyone tell me the difference between them? the alpha acids are even the same. thanks very much , the directions are kind of fuzzy about the hopping procedure, if anyone can help me out that would be great! thanks a lot ;-)

No difference. The bittering hops are added early in the boil and the finishing hops are added towards the end.

Fingers said:

No difference. The bittering hops are added early in the boil and the finishing hops are added towards the end.

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+1, what he said. Probably your "bittering" packet goes in the kettle with 60 minutes left to go on the boil. The other packet, labeled flavor/aroma will go in sometime in the last 15 minutes. Typically I think of flavor hops going into the kettle with 15 or 10 minutes left in the boil, aroma hops at something like 5, 3 or zero minutes. With a steep. Probably you are supposed to open the flavor/aroma packet and dump it in the kettle with X minutes left in the boil, then finish the boil, turn off the flame, put the lid on the kettle and steep for Y minutes, then start with the chiller.

Short hand for these hops additions is the number of minutes left in the boil in parens, so you might see in a quickly handwritten recipe (like one of mine ;-):

Hops:
(60) Chinook, 13.8%, 21HBUs, 1.52ozs.
(15) Cascade 7.2%, 15HBUs, 2.08ozs.

or something like that. Actually I am n00b enough to work from printed recipes, but I handwrite what _really_ happened on the printout in real time.

thanks a lot, i guess LD carlson labeled them that way to help idiots like me and i still screwed it up, thanks again everyone!