Noob - extract question for a partial boil

[hoppypoppy]

I am doing my first home brew Friday. The recipe was pulled from this site. The zombie dust clone.

The recipe calls for steeping grains and 6 lbs of DME, with the first hop addition at 60 for bittering. The recipe is for 5 gallons.

The problem is my brew kettle is only 5 gallons so I have to do a partial boil. I was given the advice to boil as much water as I can, like 4 gallons, add 1/4 of the extract in the beginning of the boil and then the rest at 5 min.

Is this recommend? I don't want to do something to unique on my first run and ruin the beer. I know that doing a partial boil with not yield the best result on my bittering hops and overall quality of the beer, so anything to counter that I am willing to try it out.

My 2nd batch I should have enough funds to buy a larger pot to do full boils.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Marc77]

I'd read through John Palmer's "How to Brew" portion of extract real quick. http://www.howtobrew.com/

While adding DME later won't matter that much adding it at the beginning won't hurt either. There's different schools of thought about when to add extract. When I did extract beers I'd always add it at the 60 minute mark and never had a problem. You just want to keep stirring to make sure you get it all dissolved. Otherwise clumps can sit on the bottom and burn which will give you a weird flavor.

The other thing if you don't want to read the book is to boil 3 gallons of water, let that cool and dump that into your carboy (never a good idea to add boiling water to a carboy). You'll boil off around a half gallon..maybe even a gallon. Then just brew like normal with another 3 to 3.5 gallons.

Oh and good luck! My brother in law and I are about to bottle that exact same recipe this Friday. I did extract as well so I could get him hooked and am not jumping him up to all grain.

 

[hoppypoppy]

I read most of the book. The problem is the example is for a full boil. I am trying to use an alternative technique to counter the partial boil. I could just stick with adding the extract in the beginning and not complicating it, but I want to best possible results if I can.

Did you use steeping grains? The recipe I have calls for Munich, crystal, Melanoiden, and carafoam. Was going to steep the grains for 60 min at 150 - 155 in 2 gallons. What did you do?

Let me know how that recipe turns out.

Thanks!

 

[Marc77]

Well to start off we did a 5 gallon recipe again just to get my brother in law's feet wet. I've got a 20.5 gallon pot so we just got all the water we needed, accounted for boil off and went to town.

The specialty grains we steeped in the pot and started at 154 and left the heat off which had us down to 141 by the end of the hour. So to answer your question yes, we steeped the grains for an hour but it was around 147 on average.

After that we brought it up to boil, dumped in the extract...all of it and stirred like mad to get it all worked in. In all honesty I never saw the point of those that claim that it gives the wort an "off" flavor. But I was always in the camp of dumping the extract in at 60 minutes. To me when you do all grain and start your boil all your sugars are in there too. So if there's an off flavor it's because the extract was too old.

Anywho, that's about it, enjoy it and don't over think it. As for how it tastes....it tastes phenomenal, then again I've just been tasting the samples to see if we're ready to bottle.

 

[flars]

What you need to do is called a partial boil. At this link you will find the partial boil instructions for an Amber Ale. Also has instructions for late extract addition. I'm brewing it right now.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/american-amber-ale-extract-kit.html

 

[FortMillBrew]

IMHO: Steep your grains for 30min @155 in 2gal. Top up to whatever you are comfortable boiling, bring it to a boil, kill the heat/flame, add 2 of your 6# of DME. Bring that to a boil and hop according to your schedule. Add the remaining DME at flameout, mix well without splashing, cool quickly to at least 75, move to fermentor and top up to 5.5gal, pitch your yeast. Wait a few weeks then keg or bottle.

 

[FortMillBrew]

Happy 1st homebrew day! Welcome to the obsession. Relax and enjoy the process. Be sure to let us know how it goes.

Terviseks!

 

[drlars]

You'll hear alot of people poo-poo partial boils on this forum, but I've had good success with them, and its actually my preferred way to brew because I can do it stove-top in the kitchen with minimal fuss. I don't know the specifics of your recipe, but I WOULD recommend doing partial-mashes (BIAB-style) along with it, and this will help you to get pretty good results. Your DME should be pretty much all pilsen, and rely on you partial-mash for the contributing grains.
A couple of tips that I've learned through trial and error:
1. make SURE to turn off the stove (and even give it a couple of minutes afterward) before adding your DME (or LME). This is the single most important piece of advice I could give: scorching happens, and it will cause you no end of disappointment if it does.
2. another plus of partial-boils is not having to deal with a wort chiller (or aeration, for that matter). If you are adding to 2 gal of cold water in your fermenter, just doing the cold-water bath method in the kitchen sink for a few minutes (with some ice-packs floating in there) gets it pretty near pitching temp once added to your fermentor. MAKE SURE TO stopp the fermenter and mix it (some kind of way… I'm a big dude, so I just heft it) before sampling with your hydrometer if you don't want your reading to be mucked up.
3. Some people will talk about hop utilization in a partial boil. IMOHO, even if the IBUs are higher than advertised in your wort, they should drop dilutionally once you add it to your cold water. I haven't really noticed any major bitterness discrepencies in my finished beers, so I remain skeptical about this argument.
4. And yes, I would put a 7-gal kettle on your short list of things to buy. Even though you are boiling 3 gal, typically, it does fluxuate with additions, and you need the extra space for boil-over prevention (especially if you brew in the kitchen like me - the missus likes boil-overs even less than I do). And your smaller kettle will still be valuable to you to sparge your BIAB partial-mash.

Keep these tips and mind, and I'll bet your partial-boil, partial-mashes will stack up well against your all-grain buddies.

 

[flars]

I have a tip for aeration. I sit in a chair with the fermentor between my feet to shake and swirl the glass carboy. The carboy is on a pine plank to protect it from stress fractures and scratches. Do this on concrete and you are guaranteed a mess of glass and wort.
This method can't be used with Better Bottles. BBs' site has their own recommendations.