Is 12l Pot Big Enough For Extract Brewing?

[beerandgarden]

Hi,
I'm going to have a go at extract brewing having already done 2 kit brews. I've been reading Palmer's How To Brew (http://howtobrew.com) and he specifies a 20 quart (19L) pot for extract brewing. The biggest I can find locally here is a 12L stockpot. Will that be suitable or should I keep looking for a bigger pot?
Cheers,
Aidan

 

[Brown_hound]

Hi,
I'm going to have a go at extract brewing having already done 2 kit brews. I've been reading Palmer's How To Brew (http://howtobrew.com) and he specifies a 20 quart (19L) pot for extract brewing. The biggest I can find locally here is a 12L stockpot. Will that be suitable or should I keep looking for a bigger pot?
Cheers,
Aidan

Mate u can use a 19l pot for high gravity BIAB's of 26lt!

12lt is fine!

 

[DUANNE]

you can probably pull it of using the 12 litre pot by using enough of the malt to give around a 1040 gravity to boil youre hops in and then just adding the rest of the malt and water to the fermenter. or if there is a big w near by they usually have 19 litre pots for around 20 dollors. not the best pots in the world but definatly good enough to start down the extract path.

 

[beerbog]

yep :beerbang:

 

[Lecterfan]

yep :beerbang:

haha +1....hells yeah!

Keep reading Palmer and keep reading here. Use the theory and try things out for yourself - you don't have to follow every minute detail that you come across, but you DO need to know the theory (the "why" behind the basics) so you can apply it to your own situation.

Go forth with your 12L pot and brew with a righteous fury!!!

 

[bconnery]

Here's a link to a post I did a while back on the method I used for years for extract brewing. I had an 11L pot and it was enough for this way.

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...extract+brewing

 

[beerandgarden]

Thanks for the responses guys. I'll pick up one of the 12L pots today at The Warehouse as they are on sale for NZ$28. They have a lighter cheaper 9.5L pot for about $16 and I've found out they sometimes carry a 19L version of that one from around $20 but I've got some supplies lined up of an extract brew and want to get that going once my current batch is bottled.

 

[beerandgarden]

Here's a link to a post I did a while back on the method I used for years for extract brewing. I had an 11L pot and it was enough for this way.

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...extract+brewing

Thanks for that, it will come in handy. I actually came across that post last night when browsing around the forum and had bookmarked it. I was planning on following the procedure outlined by Palmer but I'll adapt it to the slightly smaller pot using your ideas. Chilling some water in advance is a good idea for getting the temp down faster. One of the biggest differences I see between your method and Palmer's is the boil time. Plamer's method is a 60 min boil but you say 5-10 mins is enough. I was under the impression from reading Palmer that you needed 60min to get the bittering - is that not the case? I want to do an American Pale Ale style, I'm going to use Simcoe and Cascade hops, 3kg of LME (still not sure if I'll go Coopers or cheapo or half & half) and some steeped crystal malt. I was planning on doing a 60min boil, do you think that's not necessary, or perhaps not a good idea?

 

[wynnum1]

Are you doing on stove top or gas burnner a lot of stoves 20 L would be too big

 

[levin_ae92]

I used to do my extract brewing in an 8L pot! Super easy to dunk in the kitchen sink with ice to cool it!

 

[Brewlord]

I used to do my extract brewing in an 8L pot! Super easy to dunk in the kitchen sink with ice to cool it!

+1 for levin_ae92. However, I tried to find a smaller good quality pot that would also fit into a sink for chilling down but alas after running around for nearly a whole day and looking at very cheap aluminium thin based ones I ended up in despair but out of desperation bought a 20L stainless stock pot. You dont want to know what I paid for it!!! Anyway the moral to the story is I only usually do an 8-9 litre boil and just scale down as has been mentioned before. I use ianH's spreadsheet to get the LME: water ratio correct but generally I use the 100g LME per litre of water as a guide. So all in all a 20l pot is wasted for now until I get into partials and AG.

Boil time depends on what bitterness / flavour / aroma you want to extract out of your hops. Again ianH's spreadsheet give a good guide to final IBU and very generally, depending on the hop, a longer boil might over bitter and under flavour. I have found extract brewing is about experimenting but with a good guide to what hops to use in what style you should be able modify to your tastes.

 

[beerandgarden]

Are you doing on stove top or gas burnner a lot of stoves 20 L would be too big

An electric stove top - one of those ceramic top jobs. The thought did cross my mind whether it would be less than ideal for boiling up such a large volume.

 

[Pennywise]

I used to do my extract brewing in an 8L pot! Super easy to dunk in the kitchen sink with ice to cool it!

Same. 8L pot is fine for extract, you'll get away with a good min-mash in there as well :beerbang:

 

[Bribie G]

+1 with BConnery.
Some extract guides tell you to boil all the extract. Why? It's had the bejazus boiled out of it at the factory during the normal process, but then it gets double boiled when they vacuum extract the water to thicken it up. The reason you need to boil some of it in the pot with some water is to ensure correct extraction from the hops and for that a 12L pot is fine, I still own a couple of 10L

Nelson hey? I can see you in the Autumn donning a Balaclava and a sack over your shoulder and heading out Motueka way at 2 in the morning

 

[RdeVjun]

An electric stove top - one of those ceramic top jobs. The thought did cross my mind whether it would be less than ideal for boiling up such a large volume.

Yes, it may be too much for your stovetop. This is one of the reasons I recommend the low- risk A$20 19L stockpots for entry- level AG (but would also be useful for partial mash and extract)- if it doesn't work on your stovetop then it isn't a huge loss, but buying something bigger and more expensive could certainly be a big hit as you may also need to then cough up for a heat source to actually use it.
Having said that, I do know that the $15 gas camping stove, ubiquitous at chain stores like big double ewe and the big red kay, does indeed boil the 19L stockpot (up here at 660m that is), so it may pay to keep that in mind for cheap and low- risk upgrade to AG (or partial, extract as the case may be).

 

[beerandgarden]

+1 with BConnery.
Some extract guides tell you to boil all the extract. Why? It's had the bejazus boiled out of it at the factory during the normal process, but then it gets double boiled when they vacuum extract the water to thicken it up. The reason you need to boil some of it in the pot with some water is to ensure correct extraction from the hops and for that a 12L pot is fine, I still own a couple of 10L

Yeah I read that in Palmer's 'How To Brew' which I was intending to loosely follow for my first extract batch, but it does seem to make more sense to me to use only part of the extract in the boil for hops extraction. Brewlord in his reply above mentions 100g/L - is that a pretty standard value for optimal hops extraction? The thing I wonder about is, let's say for simplicity sake, you are boiling half your extract in half your water, then you would be bittering and flavouring with double the hops for that volume (to provide enough bittering and flavouring when you double up your water with unboiled extract and water). Does that have any effect on hops extraction? If not, you could then take that to more of an extreme by boiling only 1 tenth of the water and extract and still using the same amount of hops. Just wondering how that works?

Nelson hey? I can see you in the Autumn donning a Balaclava and a sack over your shoulder and heading out Motueka way at 2 in the morning

Not a bad idea. It's only dawned on me since getting into homebrewing that Nelson is the hops growing centre of NZ. I'd actually like to have a go at growing some myself.

 

[bconnery]

Thanks for that, it will come in handy. I actually came across that post last night when browsing around the forum and had bookmarked it. I was planning on following the procedure outlined by Palmer but I'll adapt it to the slightly smaller pot using your ideas. Chilling some water in advance is a good idea for getting the temp down faster. One of the biggest differences I see between your method and Palmer's is the boil time. Plamer's method is a 60 min boil but you say 5-10 mins is enough. I was under the impression from reading Palmer that you needed 60min to get the bittering - is that not the case? I want to do an American Pale Ale style, I'm going to use Simcoe and Cascade hops, 3kg of LME (still not sure if I'll go Coopers or cheapo or half & half) and some steeped crystal malt. I was planning on doing a 60min boil, do you think that's not necessary, or perhaps not a good idea?

I still do a 60min boil, just not with all of the extract. You need around that long for the hops. I do just boil the rest of the extract for 5-10 minutes, at the end of my boil.

 

[beerandgarden]

I still do a 60min boil, just not with all of the extract. You need around that long for the hops. I do just boil the rest of the extract for 5-10 minutes, at the end of my boil.

Ah, I see. Is the 5-10 min boil even necessary for the remaining extract? Do you do it just to make sure it is sanitised? I was under the impression that would already be in sufficiently sanitary condition as long as it is from a freshly opened can/jar. And I was thinking just to toss it in at the end of the boil only for purpose of mixing it in - it would also help cool the wort slightly.

 

[ashley_leask]

An electric stove top - one of those ceramic top jobs. The thought did cross my mind whether it would be less than ideal for boiling up such a large volume.

I have one of these, and I've found it will get 16L from mash to boil temperature in 30 minutes and does hold a good rolling boil. Mine at least has some kind of temperature control which switches the heat off and on periodically which is why I think it takes so long to boil.

I experimented with different volumes of water before I did a boil on the stove.

Cheers,

Ash.

 

[beerandgarden]

I have one of these, and I've found it will get 16L from mash to boil temperature in 30 minutes and does hold a good rolling boil. Mine at least has some kind of temperature control which switches the heat off and on periodically which is why I think it takes so long to boil.

I experimented with different volumes of water before I did a boil on the stove.

Cheers,

Ash.

good to know, Thanks, Aidan