Whole hops stealing my wort?

I just finished boiling up a extract/specialty grain IPA. Realized at the time of racking to the fermenter that a decent amount of my wort was lost to the 16oz of whole hops.

Question: can I start my 3 gal boil with just a small amount of LME, go through my 60 min boil with hop additions, then remove my hops with a strainer and boil the remaining LME for 15 min?

Figure I'll lose much less of my sugars that way, and hop utilization might be better in the lower gravity boil. What do you think?

sounds good to me

You just need to account for more losses when you use whole hops, if you lost .5 gallons to the hops then add .5 gallons more water to your final boil volume. One tip with whole hops, if you put your hops in bags (nylon paint strainer bag) you can squeeze a lot of the wort out of it after your done.

wyzazz said:

You just need to account for more losses when you use whole hops, if you lost .5 gallons to the hops then add .5 gallons more water to your final boil volume. One tip with whole hops, if you put your hops in bags (nylon paint strainer bag) you can squeeze a lot of the wort out of it after your done.

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+1 and remember that if you account for the lost volume it will affect the OG, regardless of whether you add water to make up for the lost wort or just boil-off less. So if you made two identical worts but one had a bunch of whole hops and the other didn't, the one with the whole hops will have a slightly lower gravity at the same volume.

SpanishCastleAle said:

+1 and remember that if you account for the lost volume it will affect the OG, regardless of whether you add water to make up for the lost wort or just boil-off less. So if you made two identical worts but one had a bunch of whole hops and the other didn't, the one with the whole hops will have a slightly lower gravity at the same volume.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the replies guys. Right now my kettle is only 3 gallons...just bought a fridge and will buy a Corney setup in the next couple weeks. So the brewing budget is a bit tight now. Going to get a larger kettle and propane burner asap!

Next batch with my current equipment, I think I'll try what I mentioned in the OP. I figure the less LME to get stuck/soaked up during the hop boil the better. It'll be a while, but I'll post back to let you know how it goes.