Reduce hops for full boil and any other adjustments?

Hey All,

I really did not get an answer the last time so I thought I would try one last time before I brewed today.

Full boil extract recipe meant for a 2.5 gal boil.
Russian Imperial Stout.

Do I need to reduce the hops at all?
Should I steep grains in 2.5 gal or full 5 gal?
Any other adjustments needed?

Thanks

 

By increasing the volume of your boil you will need to adjust your hops accordingly to stay within the guidelines of your recipe. I use a brewing software (beersmith) to do this. You're increasing hop utilization which means that in the end you will extract more bitterness per hop. I'm sure someone can pipe in with a free brewing software that you can use to make hop adjustments.

I once brewed a chocolate milk stout and went full boil with late extract addition and without adjusting the hops and I ended up with a whopping 78 IBU's!

I would steep according the the recipe as I believe that steeping in too large a volume might increase tannin extraction (don't quote me on this one though).

I'd say that hops are the only thing that you'd really need to play around with.

 

I will steep with the 2.5 gal. (won't be any harm in that anyway) and then add more water before the boil. Any ballpark on the hops reduction? Cut in half?

 

Unsure of the hops, but why do you want to boil the whole 5gal?

 

it should be roughly half the bittering hops if you're doubling the boil volume. don't change the other hop additions

 

oops, good catch, not quite sure what I was thinking . 20% is probably a good range to use, although it does vary a bit with OG (20% around 1.050, 40% around 1.120). in any case, it'd have to be a pretty big charge for you to distinguish the difference, so just leave it as is like yoop said, and adjust next time if you feel necessary.

 

I ended up leaving it alone - thanks