an idea I have had...

[Barley Water]

Just something to think about but one of the problems with doing less than a full wort boil (ie; the wort is highly concentrated and you water it down going into the fermentor) is that your hop utilization is going to absolutely suck. Hop utilization drops in high gravity situations. Additionally, if you boil for only 20 minutes, you are only going to get a fraction of the utilization that a 60 minute boil is going to give you (generally about 28% for a 60 minute boil, normal gravity wort, whole hops). What that means is that you will need to greatly adjust up the amount of hops you are using to get the bitterness you are looking for (maybe as much as three times normal). One thing you can do to help is use hop pellets as you tend to get better utilization from them but I gather reading the posts on this board that you gents generally use whole hops.

I bet I haven't brewed an extract batch in over 15 years so I'm really not the best one to advise extract brewers therefore take that for what it's worth. By the way, you can brew some damn good beer with extracts if you know what your doing but it does make it a bit harder when not doing a full wort boil. Anyhow, good luck and have fun.

[Clibit]

If you use a beer kit rather than a can of malt extract you already have the hopping incorporated in the kit so additional hops are mainly for additional flavour/aroma, unless you want to increase the bitterness too. If bitterness is not an issue, a ful wort boil is less of an issue too, but i'm not an expert on the amount of flavour/aroma extraction you get in different quantities and gravities of wort. I wouldn't worry. I would probably boil the grain wort for an hour though, and add hops at times suited to flavour/aroma extraction and retention. 15 mins before the end of the boil and later. Check out recipes. You can dry hop too of course. Experiment. But put the grain wort in the biggest pot you have and top up with water, bring to a boil, note the time, and start adding hops from 45 mins onwards and switch off after an hour. Then add this to your kit in the fermenter, top up to required level and pitch yeast at pitching temperature - you will need to cool it down to that temp.

[king martin]

If you use a beer kit rather than a can of malt extract you already have the hopping incorporated in the kit so additional hops are mainly for additional flavour/aroma, unless you want to increase the bitterness too. If bitterness is not an issue, a ful wort boil is less of an issue too, but i'm not an expert on the amount of flavour/aroma extraction you get in different quantities and gravities of wort. I wouldn't worry. I would probably boil the grain wort for an hour though, and add hops at times suited to flavour/aroma extraction and retention. 15 mins before the end of the boil and later. Check out recipes. You can dry hop too of course. Experiment. But put the grain wort in the biggest pot you have and top up with water, bring to a boil, note the time, and start adding hops from 45 mins onwards and switch off after an hour. Then add this to your kit in the fermenter, top up to required level and pitch yeast at pitching temperature - you will need to cool it down to that temp.

Yes this was kind of my original intention, just wanted to try and cut out the long boil. I was thinking the bitterness from the kit would solve this and I would get away with a 20 min boil and only adding the hops required from this time after..

Seems I might be able to get away with a 45 min though.

[Clibit]

For the sake of 15 mins I would boil 60 mins. it would be better, and it's only boiling a liquid in a pan. You could be putting up shelves at the same time! Minding the kids, writing a letter for Amnesty International, watching Corrie, re-grouting the kitchen tiles, switching your utilities online. All sorts of things.

if you want a 20 min boil, use dry extract. It saves a lot of times, no mash, no 60 min boil. But grain makes better beer.

[Barley Water]

Humm....I guess I misunderstood what you were trying to say there, sorry about that. I do however have one suggestion for the original poster. Seems like you are way too busy there, you really need to learn to shirk your responsibilities so you can brew more like the rest of us.

[king martin]

Humm....I guess I misunderstood what you were trying to say there, sorry about that. I do however have one suggestion for the original poster. Seems like you are way too busy there, you really need to learn to shirk your responsibilities so you can brew more like the rest of us.

Ha ha. I'll try!!

[Redimpz]

It's all starting to sound like a kit brewer flirting with the dark side. Welcome and enjoy.
On a similar vein, if you could find the time to mash (90 mins). Boil (60 mins) and can access a cool box, large pot and a sheet of net curtain (Boyes) why not do BIAB? any of the recipes on this site will work using this method and it makes great beer. (enjoying a pint of Brodies Prime clone as I type).
Just a thought.