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You can add most of your malt extract at the end of the boil, but you'd be much better off not boiling the hops in just water. Your utilization will go up (because the pH will be higher), but the bitterness will be harsher. Adding enough malt extract to bring the wort density up to SG...

After a brewing hiatus, sometimes it's good to brew something that will be ready in a hurry. Then you will have something to drink while you brew beers that will take longer to ferment and condition. http://beerandwinejournal.com/quickly-maturing-ale/ Chris Colby Editor beerandwinejournal.com

A pound of crystal malt is a lot for an IIPA. Most American IIPAs (including at least one of those you mentioned) hold crystal additions to below 5% of the grist. You could also increase the malt aroma of your beer by doing a small partial mash of 2-row pale malt. Beer made solely from malt...

Rehydrating dried yeast should bring the yeast out of dormancy quickly and -- for the reasons two_hearted gives above -- in a healthier state than when they are sprinkled on wort. It is easy, however, to undo all the benefits of rehydration by heat shocking the yeast when you pitch. If you take...

I've had good luck with 1056/WLP001/US-05 fermenting at fairly high temperatures. If you pitch big, aerate well and start it around 70 °F, it can climb to the mid 80's after high kräusen and still produce a clean ale. If you underpitch and it starts warm, I doubt the result would be very good...

Leave the amount of C60 the same as in the current recipe and bump up the amount of pale malt to your new target OG. You may even want to swap 5–10% of the grist for table sugar (sucrose) added in the kettle. (Sucrose is 100% fermentable, so it boosts your OG, but not your FG.) That is...

If your contamination was from _Lactobaccilus_ (or any other Gram+ bacteria), you could treat the beer with lysozyme, an enzyme sold in most home winemaking shops. Lysozyme won't help if the contaminant is _Brettanomyces_, though. Chris Colby Editor beerandwinejournal.com

Just a vocabulary note. The leaves of the hop plant (_Humulus lupulus_) are not used in brewing. The "leaves" on a hop cone are actually bracts or bracteoles. As such, it's better to say "whole hops" than "whole leaf hops." Chris Colby Editor beerandwinejournal.com

I would cut the crystal and aromatic specialty malts to zero (or as close to zero as possible). There's no need for them and they will make your wort less fermentable. To get a highly fermentable wort, do a small partial mash with some Pilsner malt. Mix the partial mash wort with your brewing...

When beer is done fermenting, it has alcohol in it and the pH is fairly low (pH 4.0–4.4, in most cases). As such, you are less likely to pick up a contaminant that ruins your beer than when you rack from the kettle to your primary fermenter. If your cleaning and sanitation is sufficient to...

The difference in pH between a solution at 68 °F and 72 °F would be tiny. I think you are right about having a meter that is somehow off. To check your meter, try taking the pH of some known solutions. For example, most finished (non-sour) beers are in the pH 4.0-4.4 range. (Shake the sample...

Oxidation shouldn't be a problem, but be aware that adding oxygen after fermentation begins produces a lot of diacetyl. (The yeast produce and excrete the precursor to diacetyl (alpha acetolactatic acid) into the wort. If oxygen is present, the precursor is oxidized to diacetyl.) Fortunately...

_Brettanomyces_ is more attenuative than normal brewers yeast, but works more slowly. By adding it at bottling, you will likely see carbonation form first due to the residual brewers yeast. Then, the Brett should take over and slowly increase the carbonation levels. Given that it will be...

Alternately, you can look up the percentage of sugar in the fruit and calculate it that way. Multiplying the % sugar times the weight of your fruit will give you the total amount of sugar added. Plug that into your brewing calculator as sucrose and that will give you an estimate. Chris Colby...

Also, are you taking a sample of the mash and cooling it before taking the pH? Your pH reading will decrease with increasing temperature. At mash temps, it's about 0.35 pH points below the same reading taken at "room temperature." 4.6 is pretty low, so I doubt that's the whole story...