Making A Malt Extract

[dougsbrew]

hi there, ive had a bit of a search here, couldnt find anything. (anyone got a link?)
my thoughts - buy a sack of grain, spend a day mashing boiling and making a base malt extract.
from here come brew day i tip some extract into brewpot and start adding hops, cool, ferment.
pros - quicker and easier to whip up a brew. cons - freshness of malt?
before i progress to further questions eg specific gravities, boil times etc. should i dismiss this idea?

 

[Synthetase]

Do you have a vacuum pump or atomiser? If not, dismiss the idea. If you're looking to boil it down into gloop at standard atmospheric pressure, you'll need to boil at 100 degrees Celcius which will caramelise it and ruin the flavour (for base malt anyway).

 

[dougsbrew]

Do you have a vacuum pump or atomiser? If not, dismiss the idea. If you're looking to boil it down into gloop at standard atmospheric pressure, you'll need to boil at 100 degrees Celcius which will caramelise it and ruin the flavour (for base malt anyway).

no dont have them, i wasnt thinking of going down to gloop stage but more like an sg of say 1.200

 

[Synthetase]

Ah ok. Efficiency will be a problem and if it isn't gloop, there might not be enough osmotic pressure in it to stop it from going mouldy (jams, honey, liquid malt extract, etc have so much sugar and so little water in them that cells that fall in them tend to have the water stripped out of them by osmosis from the sugar and thus cannot grow.)

 

[Bribie G]

You could always do 3 x 30L brews with 8.33333kg of base grain in each one, and a basic bittering hop such as Magnum, to yield 6 x 15L cubes of wort at 1066

Store them away then on "Brew Day" with a litre or so of the wort do some grain steeping then do the late or aroma hop additions, dilute to 20L for a keg sized batch and end up with a more sessionable beer.

Edit: this is more or less what CUB do on a massive scale, i.e. they pimp up a common base beer - get with the strength :lol:

 

[dougsbrew]

You could always do 3 x 30L brews with 8.33333kg of base grain in each one, and a basic bittering hop such as Magnum, to yield 6 x 15L cubes of wort at 1066

good tip about hop addition-could also help as a preservative and shorten boil time(brewday) as main boil already has been
done and say 15 IBUs already added . as for 6 cubes at 1066, how about a 3 hour(apprx.) boil to bring the wort up to 1132
therefore 3x15 litre cubes(2corny brews a cube). any adverse effects of a 3 hour boil?

 

[Bribie G]

I've done 2 hour boils, so I guess 3 hour boils aren't going to do anything too serious to the wort. However you may well get some caramelisation happening so perhaps not suitable for pale lagers etc, but easily corrected with other styles.
I like the concept of doing a dusk till dawn brewday then sitting back and getting six cornies out of it over the next couple of months.

 

[dougsbrew]

it would certainly reduce time, say 30 min. to get up to boil, 10 min hop addition(ex. 10min ipa), cool for an hour
add yeast, = 1 hour 40 min ag brew, easily whipped out after work for example.
i am thinking of doing a test run in a 10 litre cube for a 20 litre brew. 4kg grain boiled for 2-2.5 hours.

 

[Malted]

Perhaps it comes down to your confidence in the water you add to dilute the concentrate? Is it clean, sterile etc? Does that really matter?

It sounds like you are going to no chill the 'concentrate' so why not make it easier on yourself and no chill a heap of full volume cubes.
Brewday later is as simple as, tip cube into fermenter and add yeast (or open no chill cube and add yeast).

 

[dougsbrew]

It sounds like you are going to no chill the 'concentrate' so why not make it easier on yourself and no chill a heap of full volume cubes.

yeah, i was thinking that too. only plus is that its basically unhopped so in a months time you can make whatever you feel like at the time, and also your hopping is fresh.

 

[amiddler]

Perhaps it comes down to your confidence in the water you add to dilute the concentrate? Is it clean, sterile etc? Does that really matter?

It sounds like you are going to no chill the 'concentrate' so why not make it easier on yourself and no chill a heap of full volume cubes.
Brewday later is as simple as, tip cube into fermenter and add yeast (or open no chill cube and add yeast).

I used to do K&K with water straight from the tap and never had infections, so my opinion is that tap water should be sterile enough to add at that stage.

Personally I like brew days and have free time to do them so I would never do this but it is a great concept for people who are short of time.

Drew