[rbowers]

Got a black IPA planned for next week.  This will be my first black IPA and I have been reading up on some finer points with regards to hops. First wort hoppping sounded interesting and something I have not done before but there seems to be a debate about how to re-arrange the rest of the hop profile around it.  The recipe (which I am altering to experiment with a FWH) calls for 3oz magnum (60 min), 2oz amarillo gold (1 min), and 0.5oz cascade (0min) followed by additional cascade and amarillo dry hop (2 oz apiece).  Is it best to move all the magnum forward to a FWH vs. a portion.  I plan to leave the dry hopping out of the equation for now.  Should I take a portion of all the additions and move it forward? 
And just to get this right- the hops are merely added to the kettle and allowed to sit with the sparged wort until and then through the entire boil?  Is there a set time to allow them to sit in the sparged liquid pre-boil? The desrciption this process seems to yield, based on my review on the web, is that of a hoppy but smooth beer with elements of blended bitterness and hop flavor. 
Any suggestions, as always, are very helpful.

[denny]

IMO, FWH is for flavor.  Also IMO, Magnum isn't a great flavor hop.  I usually use whatever my 15-20 min. flavor addition would be for FWH.  You don't have that in your recipe, so you'll kinda have to wing it.  The way I figure what to do with FWH is to first decide how much hop flavor I want.  I add enough FWH to get that flavor (usually 1 oz., sometimes up to 2) and look at how much bitterness that gives me.  Although it's subjective, I count the bitterness addition form FWH to be the same as I'd get from a 20 min. addition.  Then I add enough hops at 60 to get me to the total bitterness I want in the beer.  Any other hop additions (the Amarillo and Cascade in your recipe) remain as they are.  FWH does result in a very smooth bitterness IMO, but so do Magnum hops.  Since your recipe doesn't seem to be calling for flavor hops and Magnums are so smooth on their own, this might not be the best recipe for FWH unless you want to add a flavor hop component to it.

[rbowers]

So leave the magnum alone and maybe add an ounce or 2 of the cascade or centennial as a FWH and leave the recipe as it is in terms of everything else?  There was a pretty good amount of malt involved (17.5lb) so I am not hesistant about maybe adding some more hops to go along side of it. 

[denny]

So leave the magnum alone and maybe add an ounce or 2 of the cascade or centennial as a FWH and leave the recipe as it is in terms of everything else?  There was a pretty good amount of malt involved (17.5lb) so I am not hesistant about maybe adding some more hops to go along side of it. 

Yeah, that's what I'd do.  Keep everything else the same but add an oz. of either of those as FWH.