Brewday - "Thirst Gold"

I finally managed to get around to brewing a beer hopped only with First Gold on Wednesday evening. After posting on Jims Homebrew Forum the recipe I was going to go for (see previous post) I was egged on to change the hopping schedule around, quite drastically, so what started out as aiming for 29 IBU from the First Wort Hops (FWH), 8 IBU from the 15 minute additions and 2 IBU from a 5 minute addition ended up with me upping the FWH and throwing a basket full of hops in at 15 minutes to get 9 IBU from both additions. The AA of these hops is relatively high at 8%AA doing this method with a lower AA hop wouldn't be as practical and it could be expensive.

It'll be interesting to see if the bitterness is there and also if there is a notable aroma explosion from using such a large quantity of late hops, there was also a generous amount of steep hops, there were added when the cooling wort hit 80 degrees C and the immersion chiller turned off while they steeped before being turned back on to drop the wort down to pitching temp quickly.

I currently have 2x FV's both with 25L of 1.048 wort fermenting away well.

The final recipe that I went for is:

50L
Target OG 1.047 (70% bhe)
Target IBU ~38
68 degree mash 60 mins
60 min boil
Fermenting with s04

11kg Marris Otter 97%
300g Crystal Malt 3%

50.00 gm First Gold [8.00 %] (60 min) (First Wort Hop) Hops 19.7 IBU
100.00gm First Gold [8.00 %] (15 min) Hops 19.7 IBU
80.00 gm First Gold [8.00 %] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep 80 degrees 15 mins)