Boiling Extract

[Hairy Maclary]

I have read that boiling extract causes the wort to darken. I have also noticed this first hand. Am I able to boil the extract for only the 15 minutes at the end of the hour boil to lessen the darkening effect? ie. Add bittering hops at start, then flavouring at 15 mins left along with the extract at 15 mins left, then add aroma at 5 mins. Would this cause any problems?

 

[matti]

That would be fine.
Are you boiling the hops in water alone?
I generally boil hops in partial mix so the S.g. in the boil is around 1.020-30. around 12-15 litres.
Boil down to around 1.040 add the extracted malt last 10 minutes.

 

[Hairy Maclary]

Cheers. So far I have added the LME at the beginning of the boil. Imagine the colour of my pale ale.
Could I boil the hops in the water alone?
I am doing a partial because my stock pot is only 19 litres capacity.

 

[matti]

I suppose you could.
Can't see the benefit if you are doing partial as you need to boil the wort extracted from the grain.
I read somewhere that you shouldn't boil hop where the wort extract is too dense
but i can't recall reading why you cant boil it in water alone.
Maybe check with master John Palmer.

 

[microbe]

IIRC I've read somewhere that you get better hop utilisation or more effective extraction of Alpha Acids when hops are boiled in a malt wort of around 1.040 - or was that not your question?

Cheers,

microbe

 

[braufrau]

I'm a partial masher too and I just boil the wort extracted from the mash and add the goopy extract at flameout.

I don't use dried so I don't know if that needs to be boiled to sterilise. I never used
to boil dried extract in my K&K days.

You need to give it a really good stir (about 2 mins) or the goop just sits on the bottom of the kettle.

And of course you need to reduce the amount of bittering hops you use.

 

[gecko]

Ok....as a K&K brewer this is what I've notice. When bittering or Aroma hops are boiled in say 200ml of wert, you end up with better flavour and aroma. If your wanting to add bitterness then there isn't any drama with boiling in plain water where the end result will be bugger all flavour and aroma, but plenty of bitterness.

If you use Beersmith and add in the calcs it demonstrates it all to you as Dr Smurto was kind enough to demonstrate to me on the weekend. Cheers Doc.

As a general rule I've found that for adding bitterness you'd go for 20min boil in water. For flavour and aroma you'd wanna go for no more than 10 min in wert. A nice start for me was 10g @ 10min, 10g at 5 min and 10g at flame out. I've found this to give really good strong flavours and almost an assault of aroma.

Cheers