Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

I am working on a recipe for my first lager - tentatively a 17 degree plato "polotmave" - a Czech "half dark" lager.

My recipe is currently this:

91% Northern Brewer Pilsen LME
7% Caramel 80
2% Simpson's Chocolate

Given that neither the caramel or chocolate malt require mashing, I am playing with the idea of adding the LME late, in order to maximise the hop utilisation - I will be using Saaz (naturally).

My question then is this, should I put half the LME into the boil from the beginning or just let the boil go with the steeped grains and add all the LME with 15 minutes to go?

The typical method I played with years ago was to add the last half of the DME/LME the last 15 minutes of the boil. Here is a quick article explaining that method as well as how to calculate your utilization. Not sure if you have seen this already.

http://www.brewersfriend.com/2008/11/02/money-saving-tips-hops-utilization-factor/

I am not sure why you would want to do this, especially with a lager that is not hop-forward...an IPA perhaps. Hops are fairly cheap. Let us know how it turns out.

A