How Much Water

[macneil29]

Hey guys got my dad into brewing and we need to boil 12g of hops for this larger.. i havent boiled hops in just straight water only after a mini mash.. so how much water should i use?

 

[Neill]

put 500g of LME or Dex into 5L of water, so basically 1:10 ratio. Boiling the hops in a solution with gravity around 1040 will utilise the hops best. i know my calcs aren't spot on but it works perfectly and isn't really that important anyway. Always add some fermentables into the boil though so it's not just straight water.

I've always done about a 5L boil, never had any issues. 10L would be better though, and 20L would be even better again (boil the whole batch)

 

[Nick JD]

put 500g of LME or Dex into 5L of water, so basically 1:10 ratio. Boiling the hops in a solution with gravity around 1040 will utilise the hops best. i know my calcs aren't spot on but it works perfectly and isn't really that important anyway. Always add some fermentables into the boil though so it's not just straight water.

I've always done about a 5L boil, never had any issues. 10L would be better though, and 20L would be even better again (boil the whole batch)

+1 with Neill.

And to add that I've had some great results boiling 25g of hops in 5L of water with a specific gravity around 1.010 ... with high AA% hops. I'd like to read about the isomerisation of the acids in hops at varying sp. gravities. Anyone know a good ref?

My best beers are always using low AA% hops in large amounts (50 + grams), rather than small amounts of high AA% hops.

 

[ianh]

As you are only boiling a small amount of hops, which I assume is for flavour/aroma rather than bitterness then the volume should not really matter.

If you were boiling hops for bitterness then more volume the better.