hey again guys
just with these two things.. my brew came with like a syrupy extract and i was wondering wats the diff between this and the hops and other stuff you get barley n stuff you get in other packs..
and why you have to do all this boiling stuff..
can someone inform me.. thanks
Hi Ale Snail,
i'll have a go at answering. I'm not sure what you mean about syrupy extract and hops and stuff but here goes. There are a few reasons for boiling. Extracting flavour, bitterness and aroma from hops,
extracting nasty proteins from malt and sanitising the wort.
There are quite a few variations on kits.
* Simplest is cans of hopped syruppy stuff (like the coopers kits at the supermarket)
All the boiling has been done for you and unpleasant proteins removed.
You just whack it in the fermenter with some brew enhancer and fill with water.
* You can vary kits by adding specialty grains (e.g. crystal malt). These have to be steeped at about 65C for about 20mins to
extract their malty goodness and then the extract has to be boiled for a short time to sanitise it.
And you can add hops. These are usually steeped or boiled with the grain extract to
extract their flavour, aroma, bitterness. Or they can just be whacked in the fermenter. They
are naturally antibacterial, so they don't have to be boiled.
* You can make beer from unhopped extract (syrupy) and add your own hops.
In this case you usually boil some of the extract for 1 hour adding hops at various times,
usually around about 60mins to go, 15mins to go and 0 mins to go to give bitterness, flavour and
aroma respectively. Then dump the rest of the extract in. Unhopped extract doesn't need to be
boiled.
* You can do a mini mash. Then you have syrupy extract (usually unhopped) as well as
"base malts" such as pale ale malt and usually some specialty grains as well. You "mash" (steep)
this at a constant 65-68C for about 1 hour. Enzymatic processes convert the starches in the
in the malt to fermentable sugars
and the extract (runnings) from this is boiled and hops added as described above.
You *must* boil this extract to remove nasty proteins (hot break) from it. Then add the syrup at
the end.
* And lastly you can just buy malt and hops, mash as described above, and boil the lot.
So there are three reasons to boil and two reasons to steep at about 65C.
Boiling sanitises the wort and removes and nasty proteins. Boiling extracts desirable compounds from the hops.
Steeping can be to extract fermentable sugar from crystal grains or the mash base malts to
convert starch to fermentable sugar.
check out "
how to brew" for more info.
