Question About Boiling

[Lobsta]

i was watching some of the basic brewing podcasts and i saw them do something that ssemed a bit wierd. they were doing an extract brew, but instead of boiling the extract for the whole hour, they added them at 15 mins to go along with the flavouring hops, and boiled only the bittering hops for those first 45 mins. has anybody tried this? how does it go compared to boiling the extract for the whole time?

Cheers

Lobby

 

[drag]

Extract dosnt need boiling.
The 60 min boil is for bittering if the extract is un hopped or if you want more bittering.
To boil the full amount of extract you need a bigger pot to get the right gravity for the hop bittering.
Thats the way I understand it but I may be corrected.

 

[bconnery]

i was watching some of the basic brewing podcasts and i saw them do something that ssemed a bit wierd. they were doing an extract brew, but instead of boiling the extract for the whole hour, they added them at 15 mins to go along with the flavouring hops, and boiled only the bittering hops for those first 45 mins. has anybody tried this? how does it go compared to boiling the extract for the whole time?

Cheers

Lobby

I wouldn't recommend boiling only the bittering hops, you should have some extract/malt in there to get the bitterness from the hops, but boiling the great majority of the extract for only 10-15 minutes is quite common, and in fact often desirable. I did it almost all the time. You will often see it referred to as 'late-extract method' or 'late extract additions'.
This reduces the darkening of the beer enabling extract brewers to produce paler beers, while still ensuring hot break and sanitising the ingredients you are putting in.

A tool like beersmith allows you to calculate the effect this has on hop additions too.

For darker beers you can still boil the whole amount if you choose too.

Here is a guide I did on extract brewing, I believe it outlines using just this method...
I brewed this way for a while and got very good results.