Hops Utilisation

[milestron]

hi all - just did my first extract brew recently:
1.5kg amber LME
1.5 kg pale DME
150g crystal
45g goldings @ 60 mins
12g fuggles @ 15 mins
s04 yeast
23 ltr batch total in about 15 ltr boil

i have just now realised that the wort should be @ 1040 during the hop boiling period (read through a few more posts) for best hop utilisation - i had just dumped in all the extract, K&E spreadsheet shows it would have been about 1070 given a 15 ltr boil (roughly)

does this make much difference, obviously at this point it is too late anyway. I see the spreadsheet has a nifty little calc to work out the 1040 OG

 

[JestersDarts]

G'Day Milestron -

Your brew should be about 1040 at your 23Lmark -
obviously its going to be higher the more concentrated it is, so at 15L, all of those ingredients are going to be about that 1070. I wouldnt worry too much - you added your hops and boiled them up at your desired intervals?

just keep notes, so that if it results in something that you really want to repeat, you can follow what you did last time.

 

[manticle]

The higher gravity means you will get less utilisation from the hops (so less bitterness). If you make a 1070 wort and want to get 35 IBU for example you will need more hops than a 1040 boil that gets the remaining fermentables added later to make 1070 OG.

 

[milestron]

sweet as, I think i'll have the method down better for next time. I'm sure this brew will be fine (I did a quick recalc in beer spreadsheet @ 80% of original volume of hops and it IBU came up a little low, so I just changed the 'beer style' until it suited everything came up green )

 

[DangerousDave]

so does that mean that i can get more hop flavour but achieve the same bitterness by using a higher OG wort in my boil?