Using An Urn To Boil Liquid Extract

[bowie in space]

I got sucked into a thread for the free Coopers postage on DIY products after numerous beers one night. I haven't done a partial/extract beer for about two years. I have two tins of goo on the way, one dark and one amber thomas cooper selection.

So I was scratching my bald head yesterday wondering what I can do. I've got a Vienna lager fermenting with 2206 Bavarian Wyeast at the moment and will recycle that yeast and make a Schwarzbier using German Northern Brewer for bittering and Hallertau Miitelfruh for aroma.
I also got 100g of Carafa II and Dark Crystal and 50g of Black Malt and Pale Choc for steeping.

How can I get the most out of my ingredients? Like I said it's been a while since I've done it this way. I BIAB all grain. I was thinking of steeping grains in a few litres of water in the urn BIAB style, then adding the tins of goo and topping my urn up with water to approx 30L, boiling it down to 23L adding my bittering hops for 60 minutes.

Has anyone else boiled liquid extract for that long? Usually I see extract brewers boiling for shorter periods with smallish hop additions. I figure I've got the urn anyway. Using brewmate my OG should be 1.042. Will adding all that water and boiling it down affect this OG? I also have 500g of LDME to maybe bump up the gravity a little.

Has anyone else done a full boil extract brew in an urn?

Cheers,
Bowie

 

[RdeVjun]

Partial BIAB is an excellent way to trick up a can of extract, that's what I'd do, but you'll need to do two batches to be rid of that lot. Shouldn't need to boil the extract, particularly if you do a partial but have you any base malt? If not, go get some.
Forget the lager yeast, you might get Schwartz colour with the ingredients, but I doubt the taste will be adequate (Pils and Munich predominately). I'd be thinking Mild or Brown (obviously...), that should take care of it and I'd do two partial batches. That way you'll get two quite decent batches instead of one potentially mediocre.
Drink- purchasing is indeed dangerous, hope you learnt your lesson!

 

[bowie in space]

Hmm. I was kind of hoping not to have to go back to the LHBS, but I understand your point. Get two good brews out instead of one average one. Maybe some Pils base malt would spruce it up a bit. If I added say two kgs of Pils malt with the specialty grains in a mash, I could then do as normal and add hops to the boil. Then add a tin off goo to each brew at the end of the boil just to pasturise it, yes?

Bowie

 

[Bribie G]

Why not head up the road to Capalaba (if that's not the LHBS you are referring to) and buy a 5 kilo batch of crushed pils malt (edit: thus save a dollar a kilo) and use half as a 1/2 sized biab with each brew, do the hop boil in the runnings from the biab as you would normally do and just add the LME into the fermenter. It's had the crap boiled out of it twice at the Coopers factory anyway - once during the standard mash/boil and again at the vacuum concentration phase.
Edit: I normally peel the label off the can (I still use the odd kit e.g. toucan headbanger) - wash the can well, spray with Starsan and open with a scalded tin opener and similar spoon.

That way you don't have to do any fancy calculations, just see what ends up in the fermenter and top it up to your "normal" mark - in my case it's about a centimetre above the "waistline" groove on a standard 30L - and you should hit the OG predicted by Brewmate, provided you have done everything correctly. Might even get a tad more efficiency out of the biab component.