Very little hop flavor in my IPA

[TrubHead]

Oh yea...hop bursting is definitely the way to go. Check out my recipe for the Hoptopus under my recipes section. All the late hop additions made my beer absolutely fantastic and ooze with hops. Whenever I make a hoppy beer in the future I will always hop burst and minimize my earlier hop additions.

Exactly my thinking. Thanks for the IPA suggestion.

 

[SurlyBrew]

Regardless of the classification as an IPA, alpha percentages, and hop amounts ,etc. There should be some hop flavor! From 4.4 oz of hops. Obviously, I wouldn't classify this as an IPA anmore, so say this a pale ale recipe. This should be a sufficient amount of hops for a pale ale. Yeast apparently makes all the difference, this I have learned now.

 

[SurlyBrew]

Also, what kind of water did you use - RO, distilled, spring, tap? If the water you used is really soft, next time you might consider adding a little gypsum, it can help bring a little sharper edge to the hops and might make them more noticeable. Plus I would shift some of that 15 minute addition to include a 1 minute addition.

EDIT - Your last post went up after I started the above question. What temp did you steep at? That 2-row needs to be converted. Maybe it didn't get converted and just added some starch to the wort?

I used spring water (chippewa springs to be exact). I steeped at 155F

 

[SurlyBrew]

I completely over looked that in the OP. I'd guess that has a lot to do with it, if the recipe called for pellets, you gotta adjust if you're using whole hops. I always add 15% more weight when replacing pellets with whole.
I also totally agree with you about figuring out what gets you the best aroma/flavor from your late or dry hops. It takes some playing around with late additions and dry hopping.

OP, I've noticed that with extract beers, I need to increase the hops a bit to get the same flavor/aroma that I'd get in that same beer brewed all grain. I can't explain why, but my extract beers always seem to have less hops character than my AG brews in general. Using late extract adds may help with that a bit, but I've never seen much, if any difference in hops utilization between late extract adds and adding all the extract at the beginning. I'd guess the combo of this being an extract beer and you using a good amount less hops in the boil is why this beer isn't as hoppy as you expected.



I accounted for t the fact that I was using leaf hops vs. Pellets. I calculated the AAU's accordingly

 

[SurlyBrew]

This makes sense too - in AG you're boiling down from 6 gallons to 5 gallons (roughly speaking), and in extract you might be boiling ~3 gallons? The important thing is that if you're not doing a full volume boil, your wort is more concentrated, making it more difficult for compounds to dissolve into solution. Couple this with a less efficient whole-hop vs. pellet, and this is what I would point my finger at.

Two factors you would need to compensate for with more hops.

I did a 5 gallon boil and was left with 4 gallons in the end, and dilluted it with an extra gallon. So it wasn't half and half, like you said. Also, I accounted for the the pellets vs. Leaf efficiency so this wasn't an issue either.

 

[Brewskii]

As to the OP... Are you familiar With the Stone's beer that this clones? Seems to me that the recipie is written to be kind of subtle for an IPA. My
Point being this may not be the IPA for you, they are not all created equal.

..... Oh, and all the above too.

 

[SurlyBrew]

As to the OP... Are you familiar With the Stone's beer that this clones? Seems to me that the recipie is written to be kind of subtle for an IPA. My
Point being this may not be the IPA for you, they are not all created equal.

..... Oh, and all the above too.

Yes I am very familiar with this beer. Got it at the liquor store right next to my apartment, loved it and wanted to make a clone. I found the recipe and made it a few weeks later. I should have taken this recipe with a grain of salt. I agree, it is very subtle recipe for an IPA. The real Stone IPA has much more hop punch.