Extract Brewing: Really, really, *really* late additions.

What's wrong with this in theory?:

Don't add extract to the boil at all. Cool the streeped grains and hopped water (and maybe 1/4 of the etxtract if you don't believe the reports that the hops don't actually need it) and then add it to, or add to it, the extract that you've mixed up with a little water separately. Heck, you could even pitch the yeast in the extract water and add the hop water later couldn't you?

I mean that seems so .... wrong .... but why not?

Hops are anti-bacterial. Adding them with the wort before pitching yeast helps the yeast dominate.(Just in case anything got into the beer) Yeast will dominate quickly, but why give them a chance at competition.
As for the dme/lme addition times, i have heard it both ways. Why don't you try it and report back to HBT to let us know what happened. Half the fun for homebrewing for me is experimenting with stuff like that.

I think the idea of adding the extract at flameout while it's still hot is to pasturize and kill any nasties. Also probably dissolves easier in hotter water.

chickypad said:

I think the idea of adding the extract at flameout while it's still hot is to pasturize and kill any nasties. Also probably dissolves easier in hotter water.

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The hotter it is, the more it clumps up and is much harder to mix in.

chickypad said:

I think the idea of adding the extract at flameout while it's still hot is to pasturize and kill any nasties. Also probably dissolves easier in hotter water.

Click to expand...

I guess "at flameout" actually means "just after you turn off the burner" rather than my interpretation "at the very last instance of your boil". So I guess I'm not really proposing anything as radical as I thought I was.

I tossed DME in at the very end of my boil while still boiling and then got thrown when it behaved differently than I assumed and threw my rhythm off. It bubbled up and I had to stir like mad to keep it from boiling over and then I got distracted by the unexpected fact that the DME had clumped to the bowl I was pouring from and if I turned my attention to the chiselling it off the bowl I had to turn my attention away from the boiling wort and it'd boil over and then I got flustered when it took me five minutes longer to stir it in because that meant my boil went five minutes longer than I wanted it to. In my flustered state it never occurred to me to *turn off the boil*. Duh!

In my thought experiment, the extract won't have been open to the air for any period of time. But then I guess as it wouldn't have been packed in sterile conditions so it'd have potential nasties in storage. I was thinking dissolving it in a bit of boiling water to get it to dissolve but just adding it at a completely different time so that adding it doesn't interfere with the hop boiling. But I guess that's what adding it at flameout means. *If you actually turn off the friggin burner*.




The whole idea came up because: I've got some left over DME and hops and ginger-beer-plant (sortof a yeast kinda) and I thought I'd do a s*** and giggles experiment of fermenting 'em up with some ginger and lemon juice in a gallon jug just to see what would happen and it seemed that it might be practical to add the ingredients separately in pieces rather than as a single wort... Just a thought...

If I recall correctly, late malt extract additions will increase the bitterness of the final brew so some people (Brad Smith's blog) recommend you adjust your hop additions to compensate. I think BeerSmith2 adjusts your IBUs automatically if you select a late extract addition.