A Guide to "Extract with Specialty Grain" Brewing

[carniebrew]

I prefer the terms "partial volume boil" or "full volume boil", i think adding the word volume removes the ambiguity. Mind you I'd still be surprised if anyone gets confused between partial mash and partial boil. I can understand confusion around thinking partial boil or full boil is referring to the heat, or the vigor of the boil. First time I'd heard the term "rolling boil" was when I started brewing.

 

[goomboogo]

I prefer the terms "partial volume boil" or "full volume boil", i think adding the word volume removes the ambiguity. Mind you I'd still be surprised if anyone gets confused between partial mash and partial boil. I can understand confusion around thinking partial boil or full boil is referring to the heat, or the vigor of the boil. First time I'd heard the term "rolling boil" was when I started brewing.

Get ready for the surprises to come. The term Partial Mash or Partial is commonly misused on this board. So the term Partial Boil may present a problem for some new brewers as well. Partial volume boil, as you've used in the above post is more descriptive. When I started brewing, a boil was described in terms of it's volume and vigour. A boil was simply a boil whether it was 4 litres or 400 litres.

It may be less confusing for new brewers to have less terminology and just talk about volumes at the various stages of the process.

 

[pcmfisher]

I do a lot of these small boils. The main advantage for me is the gear you can get away with, ie small pot and butane burner that takes those little aerosol type tins, and the ability to cool down quickly in the sink.
I know there are theoretical limits as to bitterness you can get out of a small boil, but having said that, I have made IPAs using this method that I would bet my left knacker they are bitterer (is that a word?) than the 30 or what ever IBU that is supposed to be the max.
IMHO if you are going to do a full boil you might as well mash grain!

 

[Nick JD]

IMHO if you are going to do a full boil you might as well mash grain!

I'm glad someone else said it!

But yeah - might as well bring up a pot full of water to strike temp, line your pot with some swiss voile and dump in some grain. Put a blanket on it and walk away for an hour. Not much more difficult than opening two cans of goop.

 

[JBrew]

Cheers for the help re the tap water.

One more question - the dextrose is best added with the Malt extract at the beginning of the boil if doing a partial volume boil or at the end when adding to the fermenter?

 

[Nick JD]

Your boil should have a specific gravity of around 1.040 no matter how big or small it is. 1.040 is optimum for getting your money's worth out of your hops (although if you are using software to formulate your recipe, make the boil's gravity the same as your recipe's gravity). Basically, the thickness of your boil affects the hops.

 

[Bribie G]

In the factory, malt extract starts off exactly the same as AG wort, minus the hops. It's boiled - as we do with AG - then gets boiled again (under vacuum of course) to condense it. In the case of LDME it's sprayed through super heated air to form a powder.

Apart from mimicking an AG boil for hop utilisation, why would one want to go to the expense and time to boil the stuff for yet a third time?

 

[Kudzu]

In the factory, malt extract starts off exactly the same as AG wort, minus the hops. It's boiled - as we do with AG - then gets boiled again (under vacuum of course) to condense it. In the case of LDME it's sprayed through super heated air to form a powder.

Apart from mimicking an AG boil for hop utilisation, why would one want to go to the expense and time to boil the stuff for yet a third time?

I'm doing full volume extract boils at the moment. Mainly as training for moving to BIAB while I get all my gear together. But yeah seems like a lot of effort to go to as an end in itself.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

The only 'gear' that you need now is a metre of swiss voile.

 

[Bribie G]

Probably a metre and a half off the roll.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

pardon me

 

[Nick JD]

Training for BIAB? You could shave a monkey and tech it how to BIAB and no one would notice he was a monkey until the third batch, because of the poop in some of the bottles.

 

[bum]

I must have missed that picture, Nick. At what time do you add it? Or is it added to secondary?

 

[Black Devil Dog]

Training for BIAB? You could shave a monkey and tech it how to BIAB and no one would notice he was a monkey until the third batch, because of the poop in some of the bottles.

Bog In A Bottle.

 

[tricache]

I must have missed that picture, Nick. At what time do you add it? Or is it added to secondary?

Secondary....better aroma

 

[Kudzu]

Now see, if I had've jumped straight into BIAB I wouldn't have known about the poo and everything would have gone tits up.

By training I meant gaining experience, by getting gear together I meant getting a grain mill (done) as buying grain for one batch in Tassie really isn't cost effective and I'd rather be storing un-cracked grain. Though with the prices the LHBS charges for extract, buying online for single batches doesn't seem that outrageous.

 

[Mansunz]

Thanks very much. A very well written article.

 

[Jocky]

Newbie first-time poster here (be gentle), giving this thread a bit of a bump.

Extract brewing strikes me as the 'in-between' method, with pre-bittered kit goo to the left and AG to the right. It seems particularly attractive for time/space challenged people like myself.

My question is: if LME from a can is used (as opposed to DME), wouldn't you end up with the same 'kit twang' as K&K brewers get, because that's the one thing I want avoid (apart from infections)?

 

[Marina Breeze]

Imagine you've never seen either a bag of LDME, or a hop pellet before.

You've been warming a can of goop from Coles in some hot water, pouring it and a kg of sugar in your fermenter - and adding cold water and yeast.

Imagine you don't even know that hops are funny cone flowers. An IBU. WTF is an IBU?

Ignore all the fluff.

A guy who has only ever made K&K walks in your door while you are just about to start a batch. Write what you would show that guy.

That's the key here: show, don't tell. Nine out of ten people are visual learners, and ten out of ten people who need this will shit bricks when the LDME they've never used before turns to malteezers in their hot water.

When that guy you're showing says, "Huh?" in your head, simplify rather than expand. Tell him it doesn't matter - add this much hops for this long of boiling: he can discover IBUs in his own time. And he will. Knowledge is addictive.

I agree with what you're saying here but theres always google. If you type what is IBU you'll have the answer in seconds. Sometimes peop,e retain knowledge better when they have to seek answers too right. Other than that you're right about keeping it simple for sure.