Hop Schedule Help-First IPA

[DeBAD]

We are brewing our first IPA tonight (extract). I have the grains and extracts all figured out and have plugged it all through the Brewers Friend calculator but I'm looking for some advice on my hop schedule.

Our tentative plan is:

Zythos (1-oz) 60 min
Chinook (1-oz) 60 min
Amarillo (1-oz) 15 min
Citra (1-oz) 15 min
Amarillo (1-oz) 2 min
Citra (1-oz) 2 min

Cascade (1-oz) 7-day dry hop
Citra (1-oz) 7-day dry hop

We are trying come out around 75-77 IBU and this does the trick.

I'm comfortable with my 60-min choices but I'm curious about the late additions. I mainly want that addition to add to the hop taste/aroma so do you think my timing is good. My early addition is contributing most of my IBU anyway so I can tweak the late ones if necessary. Am I better off just moving my 2-min additions to flame out?

Thanks for any input!

 

[opiate82]

Looks fine. I personally don't bother with 5/2/1 minute additions and just move them to flame out. I then do a hop stand for 20-30 minutes before I start cooling. I personally would double up the dry hop (and maybe the flame out hops) but I love west coast style IPAs with in-your-face flavor/aroma.

BUT I discovered how many late addition and dry hop additions I like in my IPAs by trial and error. I started lower and kept upping the hop schedule on subsequent batches till I got what I like. Depending on your tastes a more modest addition might suit you better and if not, keep good notes and adjust the next batch accordingly.

 

[DeBAD]

Ok we brewed last night and surprisingly the OG ended up 1.072. I ran the recipe through Brewers Friend and it was predicted to be 1.064 with 66-IBU. With the higher OG looks like the IBU should be around 62 now. We were hoping for a ABV around 6% now it likely could be close to 6.7%. Oops.

Not sure how we achieved such a high OG? I specifically entered our entire recipe into the calculator and followed it exactly. We even measured our final water out to the ounce. The only thing we tweaked (but you can't specify it on the calculator) was the timing of our extract addition. We added 1/3 pre-boil and the rest at flame out. Is there any chance that could have that much affect? BTW we have fairly hard water but for the add on water (3-gallons or so of the total 5.25) we ran it through the filter.

The only other thing I'm a little worried about is the bitterness level. In hindsight I kind of wished we would have backed off on the bitterness hops (1oz Chinook and 1-oz Zythos for 60-min). We tend to like our hops but worried it might be a little much. I know the dry hop step won't affect the bitterness but if we tweak the amount and timing of the dry hop step can we somehow "smooth out" the bitterness/higher alcohol level? We plan to dry hop with 1-oz of Citra and 1-oz of Cascade for 7-days right now.

Thanks for any help.

 

[opiate82]

Unfortunately I can't help you with the higher than expected SG as it has been so long since I did extract I don't remember all the ins-&-outs of the process. Maybe you boiled of more than expected? Either way 6.8% is just fine for an IPA IMO. Most of mine end up north of 7%.

As far as your bittering hops, you will be fine. Granted it was a double IPA but my last batch used 5oz of bittering hops that were higher AAs than what you used. Even then I got comments from non-IPA drinkers that it was a nice bitterness level. Not overwhelming.

 

[Trox]

From the sounds of it you only did a partial boil so when you grabbed your sample for the gravity reading the top off water might not have been fully mixed with the wort, so you might have had more wort than water which would give you a higher OG reading.

 

[unionrdr]

Input 2oz bittering hop addition into Beersmith2 & it'll be higher. I bittered with .3oz of warrior in my 2 latest IPA's & with the other additions (20,15,12,10) they were over 95 IBU's. I used 8.3oz hops in my Cougar Country IPA,including 2.4oz dry hop.

 

[DeBAD]

Okay I feel like an idiot but we figured out our problem with the OG. Turns out once we cooled our boiled wort and added it to the waiting 2.5 gallons of clean water and mixed it up, I didn't realize my son accidentally took the OG sample from that batch. But...unfortunately that portion only came up to 4.5 gallons. We later added .75 more gallons of water to get up to the target of 5.25 and mixed it up thoroughly before pitching the yeast but like I said I thought he took our sample from the 5.25 gallons rather than the 4.5 gallons.

As a result I ran the numbers back through Brewers Friend at 4.5 gallons and the OG came out at 1.072 which was right on the nose! 1.072 was EXACTLY what our sample was! Therefore I feel like I can fairly assume our full 5.25 gallon batch was right on track with an OG of 1.064.

Sorry to sound like such a moron. Thanks to everyone for all the helpful input.