Questions about my third batch

[NomadicHand]

I brewed a 1 gallon batch of Dead Ringer IPA.

1.75 gallons of water (recipe calls for 1.25, but too much is boiled off)
1 oz caramel/crystal malt 40
21 grams Centennial hops
1.25 Amber Dry Extract (recipe calls for 1.50 LME)
Safale US-05 Yeast

Steeped the grains properly.
Began boiling and added 1.75 lbs of DME
(added too much because I was still trying to figure out my boil off rate)
3.5g hops @45 mins @20 mins
7.5g @5mins @0mins
Chilled, added to fermentor, aerated, pitched rehydrated yeast.


Fermented in a cooling bag with a frozen two liter bottle. Fermometer read 58-64 degrees F for three weeks.

24 hours later it began to ferment. Then it started going nuts due to the extra DME I added. So much krausen it was getting into my airlock.

The airlock smelled really good, so much good hop aroma, but as the days went on the aroma died off a lot.

Aroma: Strawberry, it seems to overwhelm anything else.
Flavor: Wasn't bad, but it lacked a lot of bitterness for an IPA. Some hop flavor towards the end.

Two questions:
Why was there such a strong strawberry aroma?
Did I dilute my beer's flavor when I increased the amount of water in the recipe, but not the amount of hops?

 

[Kent88]

Disclaimer: I don't usually brew/drink IPAs.

The strawberry smell might just be esters, I don't know. I've used US05 and never noticed a strawberry smell, but I'm not much of an airlock sniffer unless there is a super obvious nice smell.

Diluting the beer at that stage should actually help hop utilization. If you are looking to up the bitterness and you're boiling for an hour or more (your earliest hop addition is 45min?) add some hops earlier in the boil. If you want some of the other hop qualities, try adding more at flameout or dry-hopping.