Hopping with full vs. 2.5-gal boils

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JonnyO

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I'm an extract brewer at this point and spend a good bit of time looking for my "next" recipes. I've also been playing around with a couple of softwares. I don't have BeerSmith which seems to be everyone's favorite, but I've been looking at Beer Mate and Beercalculus. I've noticed the difference in IBU's calculated for full boils vs. more concentrated ones, say 2-2.5 gal. When I went back to look at some of the recipes I've been planning there's often a discrepency in hop schudules. By that I mean, in some recipes there is an increase in hop amounts for smaller volumes, while in others the hop schedules remains the same, and in many recipes there's no indication of whether the boil is full or partial. I just want to make sure I'm deciphering my recipes correctly. Any advice or info. is greatly appreciated.
 
Here is what I would do weather its right or wrong I have no idea. But if you are working from a 5 gal recipe but only making 2.5 gal I would 1/2 the recipe. Grain bill and hops. your boil is going to be the same time but your grain bill and the amount of hops should be half. just my 2 cents.
 
Youre right, amount of water in the boil itself will affect hop utilization. Partial boil brewers will have to ramp up the bittering additions in particular when following a full boil recipe. IF, that is, you're trying to get as close to the original as possible. That's something beer software does really well.

Different beer software may also yield different results from one another. To make things even more difficult they don't all account for time of extract addition which also affects utilization. Of course, they also do not account for each minute detail of the brewer's individual process, a huge variable.

Fortunately we can ask the recipe creator questions on this forum if a detail isn't included, like boil size, addition time, fermentation temp and schedule, etc. Seems to me thats the best way to get as close as possible to the original.
 
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