My First All-extract Attempt

[Bribie G]

My East Kent Goldings plugs (new season :wub: ) are here and I'm making a Plain Old Pom bitter, aiming for a Southern style well hopped ale of the Wadworth or S.A. Brain variety.

The grand plan is: steep 200 g crystal for half an hour, 'sparge' off into my stockpot and boil with a plug of goldings for about half an hour, strain and rinse through hop bed into fermenter, add 2 kg LDME (dissolved of course) and chuck in 10g fuggles hop pellets that have been quickly boiled in a little water.

Nottingham ale yeast at 18 degrees which is holding nicely in my garage at present. Gelatine fine and lightly condition (100g for a 24 L batch).

The big question is, any reason to boil the hops in with the LDME? When I look on sites such as Coopers they are very open about how they produce the stuff..basically the same as their beer wort ... it's mashed, sparged, boiled and whirlpooled to remove the protein trub then sent off to the vacuum concentrator or to the spray drying dept.

So why boil if the trub has been removed already? May be speculating a bit here but it strikes me that the malt extract, after mashing and boiling, is subjected to a lot further heating either to turn it into liquid extract or especially during the spray drying where it is blasted by very hot air. And arguably this is the main reason why extract brews don't taste like AG. So by subjecting the LDME to yet another intense heat treatment is this adding insult to injury??

I can imagine there's an argument that the flavours of the ingredients should be allowed to 'meld together' with a boil but is this actually the case? I would imagine this would occur just as well during fermentation.

 

[matt white]

Bribie,

I went with morgans or coopers unhopped LDME brews for many years and never boiled the extract with the hops. I just chucked it in with 5 minutes to go and got it back to boil to sanitize, then finished and no chilled the wort overnight. I put the steeped grain in just before adding the ldme also.

The extract tends to burn, imparting caramelly/toffee tastes into the beer when boiled for long periods and also raises the SG of the wort, substantially reducing the efficiency of the hop boil (check beersmith and see the difference).

Hope this helps.

Gil

 

[Muggus]

Considering the liquid you are boiling your hops in will have only a small amount of sugar in it, i'd recommend putting some LDME in with the boil.
This'll help the will utilise the hops in your wort more effectively.
As for how much, they say a boil of a gravity around the 1.040 mark is ideal...so that roughly equates to 500g of LDME in 4-5L of water. You can, of course, double (or triple, etc) the size of your boil if you like, so long as the ratio of malt to water is pretty similiar.
Since you brought up the topic of sparging, you could even sparge your grain with warm (70-80 degree) water until you reach your volume, to really extract as much of the flavour and sugar from the grain as possible.

Besides that, it sounds good.

 

[braufrau]

The grand plan is: steep 200 g crystal for half an hour, 'sparge' off into my stockpot and boil with a plug of goldings for about half an hour, strain and rinse through hop bed into fermenter, add 2 kg LDME (dissolved of course) and chuck in 10g fuggles hop pellets that have been quickly boiled in a little water.

Sounds like a really good plan ... but I'm confused ... the 10g of fuggles at the end? Is that dry hopping?
I'm wondering why you don't just whack them in at the end of goldings boil, let them steep.
If your intention is to dry hop ... I'd wait a week and then pop them in (no need to boil) for another week before bottling.

And have you worked out the IBUs for this?

I think ...

%utlization will be about 30% for a 60 min boil.
and the weight of a plug is 28g (I think)

so ibu = utlization * (alpha acid / 100) * 1000 * weight / volume

= 0.3 * (4.5/100) * 1000 * 28 / 23

= 16 IBU

So you might want to have 1.5 plugs?? or even 2.

 

[matt white]

Butters, just to confirm, I boiled full volume water and hops, therefore required the no chill overnight. If however you do 5-7 litres, you indeed are correct that adding 15 litres of cold will get you your starting temp.

There seems to be conjecture over whether to add some malt to the water to increase hop efficiencies. I heard a long time ago that straight water will get you the best efficiencies, and through years of trial and error thought I had proved this to myself. Muggus however stated that some malt is required to get the best efficiencies?

I must say I now dont know the answer!!!

Cheers,

Gil

 

[Bribie G]

Thanks for all the hints, guys. I've ended up doing a bit of everything :lol:

Steeped the crystal malt in a pan with about a kettleful of just-off-the boil water.
Meanwhile boiled up two plugs - the second one after 20 minutes (hang the expense ) in the stockpot with two kettles of water.
Boiled in around 200g of the LDME so I had bets both ways on the hop utilisation.

At the end of the boil, actually tipped the pan of grains into the stockpot at 'flame out', mixed the whole thing to a thin 'porridge' then strained through my big wire mesh strainer straight into the fermenter and 'sparged' it with a couple of kettles of just off the boil water till it was running pretty clear.

Back in the stockpot, brought the LDME up to a very short boil for sterility - a kettle full did nicely.

After using all those kettles and topping up the fermenter it was a bit too hot to pitch (over 30) but I'll check about midnight. It's Nottingham yeast so I'm not planning to go too cold.

The wort tastes absolutely fantastic. I could drink it as is (If I was a tee totaller :blink: )

PS the late dry hopping sounds like a good idea. I made a Newcastle Brown Ale wannabee a couple of weeks ago and just put in 10g of fuggles pellets as-is after about six days. On bottling a couple of days ago there were some really subtle and fragrant tones happening, and no obviously excessive crap coming over into the bulk priming vessel. Can't wait to sample.

Edit: Butters, what part of the old Dart are you from? Interested to know if I have ever drunk any of the local ales there.

 

[Bribie G]

Halifax: Websters Pennine Bitter or Wilsons Ales. Both Taken over by Watneys and probably long gone. Sigh. North East Scotland - would definitely have been a 60/- either McEwans or maybe Maclays of Alloa (also gone ), which is their equivalent of a mild. So there you go! If you have an English pub there you might possibly get Belhaven which should bring back some memories. PS I was actually born in Pontefract so we probably share genes as our ancestors were no doubt molested by the same vikings.

Back OT the Nottingham is working away nicely at about 18% this morning and all smells sweet. No massive frothing, just civilised businesslike fermentation. Can't wait