1 lb dry extract enough for hop utilization?

[straycat]

making morebeer blind pig recipe. is 1 lb dry extract enough to get good hop utilization? would then add 9 lb liquid at flame out. thoughts?

 

[chickypad]

As I recall the Basic brewing guys in their first video episode boiled hops in plain water and debunked the theory that you needed any extract at all for hop utilization. Didn't listen to it again but here is the link:

Basic brewing video Dec 15 2005

 

[ncbrewer]

Chickypad: Good link - thanks. I listened to the part about their test on boiling hops in plain water. The conclusion from this particular experiment was that boiling the hops in water didn't produce off flavors, but he did say “The advice that John and Chris had if you're concerned about getting grassy off flavors in your beer to add part of your extract at the start of the boil.” John advised adding enough extract to get a gravity of 1.030 in the boil. To simplify the process, Chris offered that you could just add 1/4 - or maybe even 1/8 - of the extract at the beginning. The issue is alkalinity. The malt extract takes care of that. To me this indicates that they feel there is still some concern about off flavors, probably depending on specific circumstances such as water chemistry.