Hop Question

[Phreak]

I bought some hallertau hops (1oz) for a 2.5 gal brew this weekend. The AA% on these hops are 7%. Now the hop schedule on the brew is:

60 min (3.9%)
30 min (3.9%)

I'm still pretty new to this, so with the hops I have, does that mean mine would look like this right now without adjustments:

60 min (7%)
30 min (7%)

or is the alpha %'s combined make the total %?:

60 min (3.5%)
30 min (3.5%)

Also, what adjustments would need to be made or would it be negligible? Sorry, still learning. Thanks for any help. I hope I explained this correctly.

 

[boydster]

I'm still pretty new to this, so with the hops I have, does that mean mine would look like this right now without adjustments:

60 min (7%)
30 min (7%)

This is correct. You have 1.79x more alpha acids, so your IBU's will increase by the same factor (a non-negligible amount, definitely). Depending on what style you are brewing, this might be ok, but will be different than the recipe intends. To balance it at around the same IBU's, cut your the amounts in half. It will be slightly less hoppy, but barely noticeable. If you are using a scale and can accurately measure, cut the 60-min in half and the 30-min use only 60% of what the recipe said. That will put you pretty much right on the money.

 

[Phreak]

Wow! I am so glad I asked before I went ahead with that. I have a scale and will definitely be adjusting according to your advice, now that I know the AA% is not a combined total. Thank you very much for the help. It's greatly appreciated! Whew!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention..it's for an American Orange Wheat receipe I found on here.

 

[boydster]

You got it You might also try using brewing software to help out with stuff like this, I find it really helps when you need to make adjustments. BeerSmith is a big one, also Brewtarget, and some online calculators too that you can plug your ingredients into and adjust things like alpha acid % to see how it impacts the beer.