extract idea a good one?

[Trickman]

I will precursor this with the admission that I have never done an extract brew and know virtually nothing about it. I have done several kits and am considering stepping up to extract.
So reallly this is an idea that I will submit in the form of a "will this work or has anyone tried it?"

Has anyone tried using a pressure cooker in the boil process?

As a bit of a foodie and into this molecular cooking malarky a pressure cooker is often used with stocks, soups, and sauces as the sealed environment means flavour and scent compounds often lost during evaporation are locked inside the cooker as the lid is not removed until the insides have cooled down.

My thought is that you could concentrate the flavour in a pressure cooker which would be great for people (like myself) who have little spare space.

Would this work in extract brewing?
Has anyone tried this?
Or should I just go back to kit brewing and stop all this crazy heresy?

[danbrew]

If I recall correctly from the microbrewers handbook some breweries do boil under pressure so in the absence of other suggestions I would give it a go...

But, the boil is used to drive off undesireable compounds in the hops as well as extract bittering / flavouring compounds so the old lid on lid off debate will no doubt come into play... You may just concentrate a load of off flavours...

If you are short of space/ money then why not just boil in the pressure cooker with the lid off assuming it's a good sized pan? My grandad did that for years and I don't remember there being anything wrong with his beers...

EDIT: [With dried malt extract that is...]

[Rookie]

Part of the boil purpose is to drive off stuff that needs driving off so I think a closed boil would not be a good idea.
I have read about brewers pressure canning wort to use in yeast starters so you can still find a use for a pressure cooker in brewing.

[Trickman]

Thanks for the replies guys. I just thought it'd be a way of making a concentrated wort which could then be diluted to save space and energy but if hops contains stuff that needs boiling off it might be a disaster

[hommebru]

how about boiling with the lid off for 45 minutes and then adding the flavour hops and containing it for the rest? would this work as a compromise? not sure if it'd work though.
and once the boil is over you could then just add the aroma hops and continue as usual???