Help with hop additions

[JifeLacket]

I just bought a 50lb bag of light DME to experiment with along with some cascade hops. In the past I had accidentally boiled coopers kits which gave me off flavors (caramelizing) and darkening. I want to avoid that this time with my DME, however from the reading I have been doing people split the DME and do a full 60min boil with it and whatever hops schedule they desire.

Is it necessary to do the hops additions with DME? (IE could I just use plain water, or lets say 1lb DME to minimize caramelizing?) Or should I not be too worried about using this method and just carry on... I may have had my temperature too high previously, is there an ideal temperature for a 60min extract boil?

Thanks a bunch!

 

[flars]

From John Palmers free online book:
"Hop resins act like oil in water. It takes the boiling action of the wort to isomerize them, which means that the chemical structure of the alpha acid compounds is altered so that the water molecules can attach and these compounds can dissolve into the wort."
http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter5-4.html

Boil temperature? Key word is boil which happens at 212°. A very, very vigorous boil will have all of the wort at 212°. Having part of the wort surface at a rolling boil is usually sufficient.
Carmelization most likely did not occur in your previous brew with the Coopers kit, unless the bottom of your pot had a scorched layer. What you experienced was the Mailliard(sp?) Reaction for the darkening. If it was a pre-hopped LME the off flavors most likely came from over cooked hops which become very bitter. Pre-hopped extracts are never boiled.
You could use sufficient DME initially to get the hop utilization you want for bittering and then late DME addition to achieve your wort OG for your recipe.

 

[unionrdr]

I use 1.5-2lbs of plain DME in 2.5-3.5 gallon partial boils for all hop additions. This gives a light wort for good hop utilization in partial boils for lighter color & cleaner flavor. The rest is added at flame out as a late extract addition. Since the wort is still boiling hot,& pasteurization happens at about 162F,it's all good. Using less extract in the boil lowers chances of mailard reactions in sifficient quantities to darken the beer & cause that cooked extract "twang".

 

[JifeLacket]

Thanks guys that clears things up! Now to get brewing