Adding additional hops to Malt extract beer kits

[Jeffsexy]

Hi, I'm about to make the Mangrove Jacks New Zealand Pale Ale beer kit. It is a cold filled malt extract beer kits that comes in a pouch. I wanted to add additional hops to increase bitterness. I know dry hopping won't achieve this, so I know i need to figure out a way to do this through boiling. However, you are apparently not suppose to boil these kits? So I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to achieve this? Go ahead and boil it anyway? Or perhaps boil just the water with the hops and mix it with the extract after cooling? All advice/ideas welcome. Thanks.

 

[Calder]

Don't boil the kit of it specifically says not to, otherwise you will lose the aroma in the beer.

Why do you want to increase the bitterness? Have you tried it before?

I don't know what I would do. First thought would be to boil a couple of gallons of water with a couple of lbs of pale malt extract and add hops to that, and use the resulting liquid in the beer.

 

[The_Professor]

Yeah, you can boil hops in either just water or water with UME mixxed in.
Some people think you need something for the hops to "bind" to and others think that is bunk, so either should be okay.
Hopefully you will be using a brewing calculator with the actual AA of the hops.

 

[Jeffsexy]

Ok. Found the same advice online. So I already had to boil 3lts of water to dissolve the dextrose for this kit. Should I just then use the same water for boiling the hops, and then dissolve the dextrose in the same water?

 

[The_Professor]

Yeah, but for bitterness the hops need to boil for 60 minutes so you would want to use enough water to account for boil off.

 

[Jeffsexy]

Cool yes. So when should I add my dry malt extract? Whole boil?

 

[The_Professor]

You can boil malt extract for the whole boil but do not add too much. I believe it is no more than 2 lbs per gallon otherwise your beer will be darker than it is supposed to be. Less is better than more. Add the rest after the boil.