Hop Schedule & OG — I could use a little help

I'm hoping to make a beer with at least enough bitterness to balance (I'm a hophead so more bitter is ok) but, more importantly, good hop aroma. I'm probably going to wind up in between styles, but I'm not necessarily beholden to getting one particular style.

I'm also uncertain about my expected OG. Hopville's beer calculus suggests 1.056 as is, but I've been lead to believe it would actually be higher. Any insight here would be appreciated.

Please give me some advice on a good hop schedule to get solid IBUs and a solid aroma.


Note: I'm using a Coopers Lager extract that comes hopped at approx. 18 IBUs with Pride of Ringwood. I know I should get an unhopped extract, but I can't at this point for various reasons.


Recipe for 6 gallon batch:

1 3.75lbs Coopers Lager LME (18 IBU) (35ppg)
1 3.3lbs Coopers Amber LME (35 ppg)
1 kg (2.2lbs?) Coopers Brewing Sugar (80% Dextrose 20% Maltodextrin)

Yeast: Coopers Dry Brewing Yeast (15g packet for adequate amount of yeast).

Question: What kind of gravity and ABV can I expect with this? What kind of IBUs would be necessary to balance the malt? Should I use less of the sugar to avoid cidery flavors?

Hops:
1 oz. Northern Brewer Plug
1 oz Simcoe Leaf
1 oz Amarillo Leaf
1 oz Willamette Leaf
1 oz Fuggles Leaf

I realize this is a bit of a random assortment. I didn't mean to order the Fuggles, and I plan to use them for bittering as I don't think they really go with the other hops.

I want some piney/citrus aroma and flavor, but I'm not sure the best way to arrange my hop schedule. So far it's something like this:

1 oz Fuggles @ 60
1 oz Willamette @ 25
.25 oz Amarillo @ 20
.5 oz Northern Brewer @ 20
.25 oz Simcoe @ 20
.25 oz Amarillo @ 10
.25 oz Simcoe @ 10

Dry hop (7 days):
.5 oz Amarillo
.5 oz Northern Brewer
.5 oz Simcoe

Hopville BeerCalculus suggests I'll get approx. 42 IBUs with this hop schedule — including 18 from the Coopers Lager extract (using an average of various utliziation/IBU calculation formulas).

Reasoning: I don't want the fuggles aroma so I'm going to bitter with them even with low %AA. The Willamette should make a nice background flavor for this beer, and I've heard they can make citrus/pine notes pop a little more. The 20 minute additions should give a decent blend of nice woodsy/minty/piney/citrus flavor to the beer, and the 10 minute Simcoe and Amarillo additions will give some more aroma.

My dry hop additions will hopefully blend the minty/woodsy NB, citrusy Amarillo, and piney/citrusy Simcoe notes together for a nice aromatic beer.

Question: How would you modify this hop schedule? I want the pine notes from the Simcoe more than the citrus, and I'm worried about a grassy flavor from the Amarillo dry hop. Any advice on how to bring out the Simcoe pine and minimize grassiness?

Thanks in advance, and I appreciate any insight you can offer.

7 lbs of LME will get you (7*.0386)/6 = .044
2.2 lbs of sugar will get you (2.2*.045)/6 = .0165

That doesn't include gravity loses to hop absorption, trub, transfers etc... so I'd say 1.056 is a good guess.

For really hoppy beers I think hop additions between 5 and 60 minutes are sub-optimal. I like to add enough hops at 60 to get my IBUs, then blast it in the last 5 minutes of the boil and then dry hop.

I'd bitter with the Northern Brewer and Fuggles (as much as you need to get to 50-60 IBUs) and save the rest for aroma additions. I’m not a big fan of mixing European and American style hops, but it certainly can work if you want to try it.

I don't get much grassiness from using whole hops, that seems to be a problem from using pellets for the most part.

Hope that helps, good luck.

Thanks,


With hop additions at the 5 minute mark, should I let the wort steep for a few minutes before chilling it?

I always worry that a mere 5 minute boil and a quick chill would result in less aroma than a 10 minute boil. It usually takes a few minutes before the wort temp drops significantly, so perhaps that gives the hops plenty of time.

That hoppy aroma you smell when you add the hops to the boil is the volatile aromatics being shot out of the beer. I've just started playing with adding hops at the end of the boil and waiting ~10 minutes before starting the chill to allow the wort more time to extract the aromatics. So far I haven’t noticed much change from my usual practice of adding the hops at the end of the boil and starting to chill immediately.

When using a hop back the wort is chilled to pitching temps after just a few seconds of exposure to the aroma hops, so I wouldn’t worry about adding hops and chilling quickly.

The dry hops are really the key to a great hoppy aroma, boil hops will only get you so far.

FYI: I plan to do a partial wort boil of 2.5 gallons. in 15QT (3.75 gallon) pot.

How does this sound:

1 oz. Fuggles @ 60
1 oz Northern Brewer @ 60
1 oz Willamette @ 20
.25 oz Simcoe @ 5
.5 oz Amarillo @ 5

Dry hop:

.75 oz Simcoe
.5 oz Amarillo

IBU calcs:

Rager: 72.4
Tinseth: 38.7
Garetz: 52.4

That's a crazy wide range.

The issue is that IBUs saturate the wort ~100. So if you finish the boil with 2 gallons @ 100 IBUs and then dilute with 3 gallons of water you'll only end up with 40 IBUs in the finished beer. Boil as much as you can, or do two boils and combine them in the fermenter.