New to extract brewing. Help required please.

[AlanGray79]

Looking to start extract brewing. Have ordered a 15 litre pot to go along with fuggles hops and a tim of coopers amber malt extract. Also some Irish moss to help settlement.
Not sure how much water to use during the boil as well as quantities of hops to add at the start and en d of the boil. I would like to get 40 pints if possible but my local shop advised against topping up the wort in the fermentor.

[seymour]

I don't know how technical you want to get, but I would recommend purchasing a hydrometer which measures the amount of sugar in the water (if you haven't already.) Most recipes state an Original Gravity (OG) or Starting Gravity (SG). The yeast converts the sugar to alcohol and CO2, and when it's done, you measure the Final Gravity (FG). The difference indicates your beer's alcohol percentage.

If you don't use a hydrometer, then you'll just have to wing-it. A fermentation bucket with volume marking will help. 40 pints = 5 gallons. When it's done fermenting, there will be some yeast trub in the bottom, and inevitably some beer left behind after bottling/kegging, so you can overfill a bit to compensate.

I can think of two reasons the guy advised against topping-up. First: sanitation. You should boil or otherwise sanitize any water added to your beer to prevent an infection, chlorine off-tastes, etc. The second reason has to do with recipe formulation. I'm pretty sure a single can of Coopers extract is about 3.75 lbs/1.7 kg, and if we're talking Imperial pints and gallons, I'm pretty sure topping-up to 40 pints would only result in 2.2% ABV beer. Why bother, right? So, you must either add more fermentable sugar in the form of a second can, dry malt extract, "spray-malt", cane sugar, corn syrup, molasses, etc, OR you can stick to one can and reduce the amount of water. If you want 5% ABV beer, top-up to about 17 pints/2.13 gallons.

Needless to say, we can't recommend amounts of hops to use until we know your batch size. Also, how hoppy/bitter do you like your beer? What are some of your favorite beers. Do you prefer a basic pale ale, ESB, IPA, etc? It would also be helpful to know if your malt extract is already hopped; some are and some aren't. Keep us posted, we should be able to help you brew some good beer.

[AlanGray79]

Thanks Seymour. Some good advice there. I do use a hydrometer and have done about 10 kits. In terms of hops I am just after ballpark figures for approx 12 litres in the pot. I have no idea what is reasonable. Something middling would be ideal.

[far9410]

download beer engine, it will give you a basis to set up all your recipes