2nd extract brew, some questions

[barry44]

Morning Gents,

Going to do my 2nd extract brew this weekend following a successful brewuk 'way to amarillo' brew late on last year.

I am going to use Magnum, 14.4% as my main bittering hop (20g for 60 minutes) and Cascade, 6.8%, for flavour and aroma (20g @15minutes, 20g @ 5 minutes & 20g @flameout for a 30 minute steep).

The recipe details, from brewmate are as follows:

21 litres volume
OG - 1.054
FG - 1.014
IBU - 44.2
BU:GU ratio - 0.82
ABV - 5.31%

I was going to follow the brewuk method for this brew which is as follows:

'Bring 6 litres of water to the boil and dissolve the 1kg of malt extract and the Magnum hops. Boil for 40 mins then add the other 2kg of malt extract. Add the first Cascade hops and boil for a further 10 minutes. Add the second Cascade hops and boil for a further 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and add the remainder of the Cascade hops and allow to steep for 30 mins.

Add 8 litres of water to a the fermenting bin then strain the boiled liquid into the water. Top up the fermenting bin to 21 Litre mark. Ideally pouring the remaining water through the strainer to extract maximum flavour from the hops. Add the yeast when the liquid has cooled to pitching temperature (15-24C)'

Any comments on the recipes? Any suggested tweaks?
Now this method is geared towards a small stockpot, 8 litres, and required no chilling of the wort as i found that when all the water was added to the FV, the temp was suitable for pitching.

Santa was kind enough to leave me a 15l stockpot on xmas morning so i have a couple of queries on the method above.

These are as follows:

1 - Is there a reason for adding the DME in 2 steps? Can i not just add the 3kg to the initial water when bringing it to the boil?
2 - Can i alter the ratio of water in the stockpot to the water in the FV? Brewuk also has methods where 10l is in the stockpot and 6l is in the FV? Is there a benefit in having more water in the stockpot as i can now put more in.
3 - Is there a temperature that i should wait for the wort to get to before adding the steep hops or can i put them in as soon as the flame goes out? Brewuk mention 80degrees in another recipe. Should i put the lid on the wort for the 30 minute steep?

I appreciate your time for reading through this and welcome all comments that you may have,

Cheers,

Barry

[pumblechook]

Hi Barry

This is my take on your questions:

1. Malt extract tends to darken down the longer you boil it. With this in mind, achieving a lighter coloured beer will be more likely if the malt isn't boiled for as long. Can't think of another reason off hand.

2. You can alter the water ratio. Chances are that the 6litre recommendation is just to make the kits accessible to more people - less people are likely to just happen to have a massive pot to hand. Granted someone who is brewing regularly ought to have one, or a boiler. Adding more water will be fine but, while I don't the precise science for it, a lower gravity wort will extract more bitterness from the hops. Someone else might be able to give you firm advice on how to alter the recipe to compensate. Not sure how significant the difference is but you'll be diluting the wort by more than half so its bound to make some difference.

3. Flame out is fine.

Good luck!

[barry44]

Pumblechook,

many thanks for your responses.

I was talking about this to my friend today and he stated a similar point re the DME and boiling.

I am interested in what you say in your second point re the lower gravity extracting more bitterness and shall look into that further.

Thanks again,

Barry

[barry44]

double post, sorry

[Jocky]

The other reason for not adding all the extract early on is somewhat the same as the answer to question #2 - a high gravity boil will have a poor extraction of the bitterness from the hops.

From my experience, gravity only really affects the extraction rate from hops significantly at the extreme ends of the scale. If you're diluting your wort at the end then as long as most of your boil is within about 20% of desired gravity then you're ok. The simple way to put it is if you're only going to boil with one third of your water, then only use one third of your extract at the start of the boil.

So why should you use your bigger pan, and boil more? Well, the boiling process removes some volatile compounds from your beer that may cause off flavours or even spoil your beer, not to mention ensuring that everything is thoroughly sterilised, so the more you can boil the better.

Additionally, your wort can only get up to around 100IBUs of bitterness, so if you then have to dilute it with plain water, the 100IBUs will be diluted down (e.g. If you boil 6 litres with 100IBUs and then dilute it with a further 12 litres, your diluted wort will only be 33IBU). So if you want to scale the heights of IPAs with 60 or 70 IBU you can't afford to dilute much.

[Rookie]

I am interested in what you say in your second point re the lower gravity extracting more bitterness and shall look into that further.

Thanks again,

Barry

Absolutely, you will get more IBUs with an ounce of hops in a lower gravity wort.