Add all your hops at once and boil 20 minutes?!

Ok, I know enough to predict that brew kit recipe instructions are terrible. But since there are still 1 or 2 thousand things I don't understand I got some questions about this one.

I picked up a True Brew Oktoberfest kit to try and sneak in a batch before I take my finals. A few things in the instructions confused me.

1) It says to add the hops and the same time as the DME (In wort created by steeping grains). Every other batch I've done has had at least 2 stages of hop additions. From what I understand the earlier the hops are added (Thus longer they are boiled) the more bitter the beer will taste depending on the type of hops. The kit says the beer should have an IBU of 6.0. This seems very very low, on wikipedia it puts a range of ~18-25. The directions say to only boil for 20-30 minutes after adding hops+DME then put in fermenter and pitch etc...
a) Why only boil for 20-30 minutes and how does the boil length affect the beers bitterness & does length of boil affect SG?
b) I was thinking of doing a 45-1 hour boil adding 75% of hops in beginning and 25% for the last 10 minutes, how could this change the taste and what are your opinions?
c) Has anyone used True Brew Kits, specifically the Oktoberfest, and what have your experiences been?


Any other help would be great, thanks guys.

Never used True Brew Kits, but the instructions are suspicious. The malt extract is unhopped, so you don't need to worry about changing the hop profile by boiling longer than instructed. You are right that the IBU should be 18-25, not 6. Even Budweiser has a higher IBU than that. I suggest that you a) boil 60 min., and b) look at the amount & alpha acid % of the hops with the kit, and use a recipe calculator to guide a sane hop schedule. You may have to buy additional hops. This style does not have a lot of hop flavor/aroma profile, so I wouldn't do late hop additions.

Right now the recipe calls for 2 oz of liberty hop pellets at the beginning, they got an alpha % of 4.1%, no clue what that means but I'm gonna start looking it up.

The short boil maximizes the flavor retention. A 30 minute boil gives you 80% of the bittering a 60 minute boil does. I think the 6 IBU is a misprint. Plug the recipe in here:

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator

I would do 1 oz at 60 minutes and the other 1 oz at 10. Just my 2 cents.

I bet its supposed to say 16 IBU's, putting it at the lower end of a marzen style.

Im thinking your right, I had to ask though 6 just makes no sense at all.

running 2oz of 4.1 %AA hops, and assuming the malt extract gets your OG to 1.054, recipator says 2 oz @ 30 min would give 21 IBU. So that's not such a bad bit of advice. If you did 1oz @60 min & 1oz @10 min, you'd get 19 IBU. This would be my preference, too, but if you're shooting for true-to-style, this will give too much hop flavor.