Question about screwed up 1 gal batch

Had a brew day yesterday, and for the first time I tried brewing an experimental 1 gal batch in the kitchen at the same time as I brewed a 5 gal batch outside. The big batch went smoothly, the 1 gal batch definitely did not.

I'll post the recipe I used at the end of this post, but basically I screwed up the wort volume estimates and way underestimated volume loss to the boil and trub. Recipe was calculated to give me 1.056 OG and 51 IBUs. I ended up with a little less than half a gallon going into fermenter with way too high gravity. I even added some of the trub into the fermenter to make sure I was getting all the viable wort. I boiled another half gallon or so of water to dilute and bring up to around the volume I wanted, and ended up with an OG of 1.040.

This was a small experimental batch so I'm not devastated at the idea that I'll just have a lighter beer, I think the recipe would do just fine scaled down to 1.040 OG. BUT I'm wondering if I should expect the hop character to be scaled down proportionally to the gravity or if it will be too low. Can I assume that when I boiled off too much volume, I effectively concentrated both the sugars and the hops, and then diluted both proportionally when I added more water? Any feedback, either on a theoretical level or from personal experience with results from similar screw ups, would be appreciated.

And one more question: to reduce wort loss on 1 gal batches in the future, should I just started with a lot more water, or can I get away with a shorter boil (30 mins?) too?

Here's the recipe (this is the 5 gal batch recipe, I just scaled down by dividing by 5.

Meridian Single Hop Pale Wheat

GRAIN
5.5 lbs Great Western Premium 2-row
4.5 lbs White Wheat Malt

HOPS (all Meridian, 6.7% AA)
0.5 oz 60 min
0.75 oz FWH (20 min)
1 oz 15 mins
1.25 oz 10 mins
1.5 oz 5 mins
2 oz hop stand
4 oz dry hop

Safale US-05 yeast

Estimated OG 1.056
Theoretical IBUs 51

If the OG and IBUs went down proportionally, that would give me a beer with an OG of 1.040 and IBUs around 36, which sounds like a nice, light hoppy wheat--probably closer to a standard pale wheat than the recipe I originally calculated, which was more like a wheat IPA. I'm just wondering if that's what I really have now.

Thanks!

 

I wasn't using software, I was just sortof guessing. I was planning for a higher % loss than I get in 5 gal batches, but obviously wasn't expecting quite the loss I got. I also wasn't expecting the large amount of trub in the kettle from such a small amount of hops.

Do you have recommendations for how approximately much pre-boil wort is necessary to end up with a gallon (or really more like 1.25 gallons to allow for trub loss)? I tried finding guidelines for 1 gal batch mashing before I did this but couldn't really find anything.

 

Yeah I have trub loss amount pretty well figured out on my 5 gal system, I was assuming that it would be proportionally the same for a 1 gal batch but it seemed to be considerably higher. Maybe my perception was skewed since I was seeing the trub in relation to a greatly diluted post-boil wort size and not in relation to the batch size as it should have been, but it seemed like a crazy amount.