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zarniwoop

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Hi All,

Brand new to brewing and have been devouring How to Brew by Palmer whilst waiting for my temperature controller to arrive before I start my first brew, I do have a couple of questions (and probably many more to follow) that I'm still a little unclear on and I'd appreciate any help. (I've tried searching through the forum but still don't fully understand)

1. Palmer recommends boiling all of the malt extract to create the hot and cold breaks where-as there are several recipes and recommendations on this forum to only use a percentage of the extract in the boil and add the rest to the fermentor unboiled. I understand this is to reduce the OG to allow a better hop utilisation as a full volume boil is not being done (?) but this seems to be in direct contradiction of Palmer and I'm unsure how this would allow a complete hot break?

2. Several recipes that I have my eye on for my first brew use additional suger (i.e. 500g of dextrose), again Palmer doesn't use sugar in any of his recipes (so far that I've read) and I'd like to know why sugar is included in some recipes as opposed to just malt extract? (looking at Neill's Centenarillo Ale specifically).


Thanks for any help and it's nice to find such an informative and pleasant forum. :D


Cheers

Zarniwoop
 
1. You will get hot break in extract beer, But it has already been boiled so the amount is little. When doing AG yes you have to leave behind the hot break (cold break is not bad to have in the beer, I think it acts as a yeast nutrient). People say boil 100g in 1lt of water this makes the boil to about 1.040 SG so you get the best out of the hops. If you do a full volume in a smaller pot then you will have to use more hops to get the same result.

2. If you do a all malt brew then it will be sweet and finish high. So you substitute a bit of the malt with dextrose this thins the beer out so its not so sweet or heavy and will make more alcohol in the beer as the malt will not ferment right out. Now with good extracts like Briess then you will prob get away with a full extract brew but the cost is alot more per brew (about $4 a kg from memory) but its the best malt you can get and prob the quality they use in USA. The cheaper stuff is just food grade used widely in the food industry, It is not made just for brewing so it seems to finish alot higher and leave more sweetness.
 
1. You will get hot break in extract beer, But it has already been boiled so the amount is little. When doing AG yes you have to leave behind the hot break (cold break is not bad to have in the beer, I think it acts as a yeast nutrient). People say boil 100g in 1lt of water this makes the boil to about 1.040 SG so you get the best out of the hops. If you do a full volume in a smaller pot then you will have to use more hops to get the same result.

2. If you do a all malt brew then it will be sweet and finish high. So you substitute a bit of the malt with dextrose this thins the beer out so its not so sweet or heavy and will make more alcohol in the beer as the malt will not ferment right out. Now with good extracts like Briess then you will prob get away with a full extract brew but the cost is alot more per brew (about $4 a kg from memory) but its the best malt you can get and prob the quality they use in USA. The cheaper stuff is just food grade used widely in the food industry, It is not made just for brewing so it seems to finish alot higher and leave more sweetness.

Thanks, that answers it perfectly :D
 
I've come across another question that I was hoping someone would be able to shed some light on and thought I'd tack it on this thread rather than start another.

When adding water to the fermentor to make up the volume Palmer states that this should be boiled but it seems that many people don't do this. Is it necessary and what's the best method to boil 15L+ of water safely? Do you need to keep it covered whilst cooling as I guess this would result in it taking a long time to cool?

Any advice much appreciated :D


Cheers

Zarniwoop
 
I boiled my first 2 brews and never did since. Cant tell you there was any difference in taste and I have never had a infection, had wild yeast get into my brew but never a infection. I read that to when starting so was like oh! I must boil everything and do this and that! No its not needed, If you have old tank water then boil but if its town water you drink it and you dont get sick. If your close to the towns tank and its really chlorinated then boil or you can get tables to add to the water to minimize it. other then that dont both boiling the water you water time and electricity and for kit and extract I cannot see a point.

If you doing extract and have a big pot then you could do a full volume boil with the hops so you add all the water, fermentable and hops at the times but you have to allow for boil off or just add 23lts and if you boil off 3lts top it up from the tap. Other then that cant see the point and effort.
 
just my personal opinion but i would boil the water for topping up. what size pot are you boiling the wort in? if you can a boil of the whole amount s better but if you need to do a top up you can boil the previous day an just keep the pot covered and sealed so no natys get in to your freshly sanitised water. if you have the capacity to boil the whole amount you can always use the no chill method and pour it into a 20 litre water drum availble from bunnings and wait 24 hours for it all to cool. when i do kit beers i actually boil 20 litres of water and seal it in the drum for use the next day keeping out any unwanted bugs hopefully. it really sounds as if youve done some good research already and your first beer should be a cracker. wish i hadve done the same and missed the first couple ofshitty brews before i worked out the temp control situation among other things.
 
Full boil not required, never had an issue, If you wanted to actually use sterile water you would meed to boil it 3 times over 3 days, spores can survive a single boil, what we rely on is the yeast becoming the dominant organism in there.

The only full volume boils I've ever done have been AG... all others had top up water right from the garden hose, no bother ever.

I guess it does depend on you'd water source though.
 
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