08-03-2010, 12:31 AM
A full 45 miniute boil will do a much bettter job of extracting the 'bitters' from your hops. Magnum Hops makes a nice type for the long boil as it has a lot of bitterness for the buck. Frequently I will put just 1/2 oz for an entire 5 gallon batch of light beer clone. Pre-hopped DME is fairly hard to come by, I guess it is a matter of demand. The beauty of it is that the hops have already undergone the long boil to pull out the really complex bittering agents so you can just heat it enough to sanitize it and disolve all the sugars -- GO IPA.