Noob needs help with late LME addition

[vtron]

My first few batches came out ok, but the color has been too dark and flavor too sweet. So I'm planning on experimenting with late LME addition on NB's Dead Ringer IPA.

I'm having some trouble wrapping my mind around hop utilization and what type of IBU I should be shooting for on this brew. So I have three questions:

1. Should I read kit recipes assuming a full boil? If I use the recipe as stated with a 2.5 gallon boil, I'm only looking at 34 IBU. A full 6 gallon boil is 66 IBU, which is more in line with what I want out of this brew.

2. I plan on using 3.15lbs of DME for full boil and adding the remaining 6lbs with about 15 min remaining. How do I calculate the IBU with the change in boil gravity?

3. Does the following modified recipe sound good?
4 gallon boil (the most I can do right now)
Steep 1lbs Briess for 20 min.
Add 3.15lbs LME
1oz Centennial (60min)
1oz Centennial (20min)
6lbs LME (15min)
1oz Centennial (5min) (reduced from 2oz)
1oz Centennial (dry hop)

As long as changing the boil gravity with 15 minutes remaining doesn't have too much affect, that would put me at 67 IBU.

Thanks.

 

[Calder]

60 minutes in a 1.032 wort (roughly what you are starting with), and 1 ozs of Centennial (assuming 10% aa) would give you 50 IBUs (Rager).

60 minutes in a 1.086 wort (roughly what you would have if you added everything at the start), and 1 ozs of Centennial (assuming 10% aa) would give you 43 IBUs (Rager).

You will be somewhere in-between, and your 20 minute addition will add to it. Might want to estimate you will get about 1.060.

Beersmith does accommodate late additions in it's calculations.

 

[HeavyHandedBrewing]

Buy the Beersmith program. Around $20 and it calculates all that for you. For the cost of 1/2 a 5 gallon batch, you can save yourself ruining a batch of beer ($40 + time & effort). I know they use to give a 2 week or so free trial of the full version of the program. I use it before all brews the first time I do a new recipe.

 

[jsweet]

21 days free trial. And yeah, +1 on getting Beersmith or some other brewing software. One of the very first things I used it for, I was about to brew a Grand Cru and realized the Hallertauer hops I had bought were about half the % alpha than the recipe I had been looking at, and I didn't have any extras. So I plugged that into Beersmith, and screwed around with the timing of the extract and hop additions until the IBUs matched up with the original recipe. Really saved my bacon. Paid for the registration the next day.

Using the software, I was making successful tweaks to other people's recipes by my 3rd batch, and my 7th batch was a recipe I composed from scratch to use up leftover ingredients I had on hand. It's carbing up now, so I suppose it still could prove to be a disaster, but it tasted awesome at bottling time! There is absolutely no way in hell I could be doing that sort of thing at this point without the software. Too many calculations, spreadsheets, little exceptions and things to remember... with Beersmith, I just tell it what style I want to brew, look up a couple of similar recipes online to get a jumping off point, and then play with the ingredients until all the numbers come up the way I want them. It's really easy and fun.

 

[Yooper]

I love Beersmith- but I've got to disagree with the hops IBUs calculations. That's based on "old science" and not really accurate.

I'd suggest just doing the late extract addition, and forgetting the calculations. John Palmer wrote in his first book "How To Brew" that hops utilization was impacted by the gravity of the wort. That is what these calculations are based on. But even John Palmer has recently (2 years ago) stated that he was mistaken about this. IBUs do NOT depend on wort gravity, but perhaps instead on break material.

Anyway, I'd hop just as the recipe states, and add the bulk of the LME at the end of the boil. I prefer flame out additions, but I know some will add it with 10 or 15 minutes left to boil it a bit.

 

[NordeastBrewer77]

I love Beersmith- but I've got to disagree with the hops IBUs calculations. That's based on "old science" and not really accurate.

Anyway, I'd hop just as the recipe states, and add the bulk of the LME at the end of the boil. I prefer flame out additions, but I know some will add it with 10 or 15 minutes left to boil it a bit.

That's how I do my late LME additions (@ around 10-15 mins) and it works out fine. I agree with sticking to the recipe but adding your LME late to cut down on the darkness and sweet flavors.

 

[unionrdr]

I tried that with my Sunset Gold ale. I used half the bag of plain light DME in the boil for my hop additions (3),& it seems that utilization was def better than a "hop tea" at the beginning 15 minutes. The tea bit isn't bad either,but the half DME & 3 additions tastes way better.
You wouldn't think it was an extract,it's so darn tasty.
I'm going to change the hop schedule to make an IPA out of it too. Two ales for one recipe...

 

[vtron]

Thanks for the replies. Looks like I'll be picking up a copy of beersmith. Too bad they don't offer a linux version.

 

[SkiNuke]

look into brewtarget. They have a linux version and it seems to work pretty well. I had some issues installing, but i removed it, restarted, and reinstalled and it magically worked. More importantly, it seems to do everything you would need to do (at least for extract brewing, i dunno about all grain, but i am not quite there yet).