Bitterness

Thanks for the information guys. 

Yes the hop AA% is correct (thats what its packaged as anyway).  Most brew book recipes seem to stipulate 90 minute boils so thats why I do them.  Do you guys do 60 minute boils?  Whats the advantage/disadvantage?

Beersmith 2 calculated all the hops to give total bitterness of just shy of 40.  It was a 50 litre brew.  Think half of that would have proved perfect.

Do all you guys use beer smith to calculate your bitterness, colour etc?

I think Ill leave any salt additions from the next brew.

I may have misread but I do 70 min boils most of the time and there is nothing wrong with boiling longer especially if you need to hit your grav throw the boil off amount.  I add the first bittering hop at 60 or 50 min mark. the longer the hop boils the more bitterness you get from it so I think that turndevil read that you boiled 116 grams of hops for the whole 90 min and that sounds like overkill, not sure if that's whats going on but that is how I took it.

Yes thats right, 116g for 90 mins.  Its what the book said.  I entered the recipe into brewsmith and it calculated this amount of hops for 90 mins.

Do you guys boil hops for 60 mins max?

There a lot of way's to hop beer. Boiling hops in a long boil seems to bring out  a harsh bitterness. Short boiling requires more hops but increases the hop flavor and aroma. First wort hopping seems to reduce harshness. I buy a lot of leaf hops late in the fall right after harvesting. That way I use a lot of hops late in the boil, it's called hop bursting. I keep my IBU's on the low side of the scale ( IBU/SG about .45 to .65 depending on what type of beer). Some people like a lot of bitterness increasing their IBU,s in the 120 to 175 range in a IPA. I enjoy lower hop beer. 

There are so many variables in brewing , if and why brewers do things differently can be for many reasons. So I'm saying that there is more than one way to skin a cat. the bottom line is that the longer you boil the wert after you add hops the more bitter that hop will taste. Now for boil times and how long brewers boil for is also subjective. Boil time are mostly 60 min because that is how long on the most part it takes to drive off DMS , kill all the bugs, and get bitterness from hops. when these thing are achieved there's on the most part, no longer a reason to boil.  It saves time and money to do 60 min. Some recipes call for a longer boil for different reasons, what the reason is in yours, we may never know.

I like to first wort hop my bitter styles such as IPA's.  It's a weird thing.  I can make the exact same IPA.  If I put the hops in my brew kettle and mash out onto the hops,then bring it up to a boil, that extra half hour steeping in the below boiling wort gives me a smooth rounded hop bitterness with out that dry harshness that I don't like.  If I wait until the wort comes to a boil and then throw the same hops in at commencement of the boil (with no first wort hops), I get a harsh bitterness that I personally don't like.  I have brew friends that live for that over the top west coast style harsh hop bitterness.  I just don't enjoy that type of harsh bitterness.  If a beer makes me burp hops after each swallow, I'm not happy with the beer.