so its not worth taking 2L's of wort once ive added the goo and sugars and add hops to it? You reckon just boil water? When i see times for boil eg. 30g Fuggle pellets 10g 15 mins, 20g steep... Is this done in just water? same times still?
Absolutely it's worth it.
Seems like you might be a bit confused here mate.
When it's been suggested that you don't boil cans of goo, that is correct. But because we boil for different reasons depending on the method and ingredients used to make our beer, this is nothing to do with hops....
As suggested, an all grain brewer for example, boils wort for a whole stack of reasons. A lot of them have absolutely nothing to do with hops or bitterness.
If you're doing Kits, you could do either of the following:
1. Remove a small portion of your wort and boil your hops in this for the times and amounts that your recipe indicates.
2. This is what i do. Keeping in mind that i am an all grain brewer unless i need something really fast.
If you are steeping some grains and adding extra malt (dry or liquid) to a kit, use this to boil your hops in to a lmalt to water ratio of around 100g per litre. This will create a small wort with a "gravity" of around 1.040 which is considered ideal to get the most of out your hops.
Yes you can absolutely use plain old water, but you will get more out of your hops, and a more accurate representation of the recipe if you use a wort with the recommended gravity to boil them in.
When you are looking at a recipe that someone has posted, either in a post, or in the recipe database, take care to note if it's a kit recipe, an extract recipe, or an all grain recipe, as the terminology and what it implies in process can sometimes create a blurry line and confusion.
Hope this makes sense,
Nath
