I know the OP has a pre-hopped extract, But--I thought I read that higher Specific Gravity decreased the hops utilization
Doing a partial (water) boil with 1/2 the extract for most of the boil (with late extract addition) should increase hops utilization, correct?
t
Yeah, you read it somewhere
.....but you missed the big point that we're not DEALING WITH HOP UTILIZATION ISSUES IN A PRE-HOPPED KIT. The hops have already been UTILIZED.
That has been taken care of when they boil the kit, hence the term "Pre-hooped"...the only hops being added in this case is aroma...and that's NOT gonna matter.
You're actually confusing what is a very simple brewing issue by over complicating it...and scaring off from doing something.
And in the case of the non-pre-hopped beers where you add bittering hops, honestly the amount of "tweaking" to compensate for that in a LEA is really too insignificant to sweat even, when you are starting out....If you want to be anal, you can, but like so much in brewing, there's many ways to do something, and many theories, and plenty of folks make great beer by ignoring the theories and just doing it.
You wanna hear something interesting? That will really put the idea of small changes in Ibu's and Ibus in general into perspective?
John Palmer basically admits that what he wrote about IBU's in How to brew, was essentially "wrong" or at least outdated in light of new science...
Basic Brewing Thursday, March 20, 2008 4:30 PM
John Palmer, author of How to Brew, shares information from a conference that challenged his concept of what defines an International Bitterness Unit (IBU).
Click to listen, MP-3
It will really screw up you head even...or it will make you not sweat the small stuff, like tweaking a tiny bit of hops. We couldn't perceive that small change anyway,
Sorry to be mean about but I really hate to see someone being dissuaded from doing something that actually GOOD for his beer, and learning his process, by some info that is really just being taken out of context to the issue at hand.