top up - why dont we boil concentrate?

[Dan]

this one has been pinging around in my head for a while.
what are the implications of diluting the wort by half?

i understand bitterness level will need re adujsting, but are there some major pitfalls to this approch?

I made up 40L of wort and diluted to 60L, albeit it was a weak beer, it wasnt the best, but it was better than average. has anyone else tried it?

how far can you push it?

[Gurgeh]

from what i'm led to understand, a lot of breweries that do 'beer strong', 'beer' and 'beer light' do exactly this.

me - i'm seeking to make blonde beers, so i'm keen to avoid caramelisation.

[Frothy]

Yeah particularly commercial lagers are boiled and brewed at a high concentration as this allows them to get the most efficiency out of their kettle/ mash tun for it's size. They will also rinse as much sugar as possible from the grains. I started with extract brewing and partial boils, I had some great results but as per Palmers advice the gravity of the boil is the importand factor to hop utilisation so for example halve the volume of the boil i.e. 10L for a 19 or 23L brew and simply use half of the malt extract and the same quantity of hops you would usually use. Add the remaining malt extract in the last 5 minutes and dilute to the desired volume. This has the added benefit of cooling the wort considerably before pitching the yeast. This way you can make some full scale brews using just a large stock pot on your kitchen stove.

Frothy

[Aleman]

Add the remaining malt extract in the last 5 minutes and dilute to the desired volume.

This is correct from the hop utilisation POV but, and its a big BUT, as 1/2 the wort hasn't boiled, you increase the potential for protein haze, and also adversely affect the stability of the beer. OK for a quick running beer but NOT for something that is going to hang around for 6+ Months.

FWIW I do this with any brewing sugars that are called for in the recipe as these have zero protein and so do not affect the stability / haze potential of the beer.

[Dan]

i suppose one issue would be the water which you use to dilute with.apart from needing to be sterile. it would raise the ph from around 5 up towards 7, that could effect the fermentation.

I oftern used to dilute the wort to a certain extent. but always belived there was somthing inherently wrong with the practice. nowadays I add the topup water to the pan before boiling and boil off the excess.

i heard big lager breweries diluted the finished beer with carbonated water. or do they do this in addition to diluting the wort.

[steve_flack]

i heard big lager breweries diluted the finished beer with carbonated water. or do they do this in addition to diluting the wort.

Usually the bottleneck in breweries is fermentation space - the beer spends longest there. Getting more beer out of the same space is an attractive option so they brew a beer stronger than they would sell. Ferment it at that gravity then dilute it at racking with deoxygenated, uv-treated sterile water. The other option is to speed up fermentation by increasing temperatures but there's only so far you can go with that.

[Dan]

thats very interesting. i think, just for an experiment, i'll brew 10L of strong wort and top it up to 30L jut to see what happens.

[Frothy]

TJB, fair point about the wort. I'm talking about Malt extract though which has already been heated to the point of dehydration and so wouldn't produce any haze.

Frothy

[Aleman]

Ive seen fairly impressive breaks from my extract beers, so I wouldn't be to sure of that.

Of course the quality of extracts may have improved since I last brewed an extract beer