Extract Brewing question

[Gamby]

Gday guys,

I tried a U Brew it Pale Ale the other day and was very impressed, i am well aware that U Brew it is really just extract brewing but with quality commercial setup. At present i am just Extract brewing at home, i am doing the usual, add ingredients to 3 litres of water bring to the boil put it into the fermenter and top up with tap water to bring temp down. My question, would i get a better tasting beer if i boiled up 25 litres of water added ingredients put the beer through a heat exchanger or use a wort chiller and then into the fermenter, i guess im asking is it better to boil the full batch from the start rather than add tap water?

Cheers guys

 

[mkstalen]

It depends if what you're doing is Full Extract or really Kit & Kilo.

If you're doing Full Extract but only doing everything in 3L of water, then you're not going to get the best results as the SG of the boiling wort will be massively high and not give the best results when you add in your hops.

If you're doing full extract, then you really should be doing a full volume boil.

If all you're doing is kit & kilo with a little hop bacg for some extra flavour then you're not going to get anything extra out of a full volume boil, and it may in fact make it worse.

 

[pcmfisher]

Extract brewing is useing unhopped malt, boiling hops at various intervals over 60 mins to give bitterness, flavour and aroma. Like at ubrewit.

Kit brewing (which I think you may be doing at home) is using a tin that already has hop bitterness, so all you are adding is other fermentables and maybe some hops for flavour/aroma. You do not need to boil at all, and as mentioned could be counter productive. Just maybe some hot water for the hops for flavour.

Back to extract brewing. There is no need to do a full volume boil like they do at ubrewit. All you need is 10:1 dry malt in water ie 500g dry malt in 5 litres of water to do your 60 min hop boil. Easy to do on the stove and easy to cool down. The rest of your fermentables can either go in the boil pot at the end or, as I do with most of my recipes having a small amount of speciality grain, bring the grain water to the boil for a minute and use that to dissolve the rest of your fermentabes in your fermenter.
For me, the difference in quality between this method and using bittered kits is huge.


You can get about 30ibu into a 5 litre boil. If you need more bitterness you may have to do a little bigger boil.

 

[Weizguy]

You didn't really mention hopping your beer, so I would suggest that a full boil is likely to be better if you're trying to extract bittering from the hops.

You may also want to investigate the extract late brewing technique and the Texas two-step extract method, for some perspective, here.

 

[Gamby]

Thanks guys,
I started with the basic hopped cans etc but have now progressed to DME, steeping my grains hop additions etc with a 60 min boil, im obviously very much still a novice but was just wondering if a full volume batch would produce a better beer. Beer God can you explain what you mean by Full Extract ?

 

[Matplat]

He just means what you are doing i.e. no cans of pre-hopped kits. Full volume boils get better hop utilisation, and you are guaranteed the entire wort is sterile. Aside from that I don't think there is much flavour difference. I know i made some fantastic beers when doing partial boils.