Two-Hearted Ale question

[UnrulyGentleman]

Hey all, going to be attempting a Two-Hearted Ale clone extraxt recipe tomorrow (from BYO) and had a quick question on procedure. Instructions say to steep grains in 1.2 gallons for 45 minutes and then to add DME (4.5 pounds!), but I'm not sure how much water to add with the DME. Should I bring it up to 3 gallons or just as much water as I can fit or, and I doubt it, leave it at 1.2 gallons? Sorry if it's a dumb question, still a noob and only on my 5th batch. Thanks in advance!

 

[HopLife]

I like to boil as much wort as possible. That being said, you will have your own obstacles based on your heating of the wort, size of kettle, and ability to chill wort.

When doing extract I shoot for a 3 gallon boil volume added to a prechilled 2 gallons of top of water already in the fermenter. That way I still have enough cool water to bring the wort down to temp quickly.

You will have some benefits if the boil is a larger, lower gravity wort; increased hop utilization, less loss of sugar in the residual wort left with hops, and potentially better release of undesirable compounds like DMS.

The downsides to a large boil are:

higher likelihood of boil over, slower chilling after boil.

Good luck! Remember the priorities: Sanitation is #1, healthy yeast #2, everything else is less important.

 

[duckmanco]

Boil as much of the total volume as you can.... That said, you also need to worry about chilling that same volume as well. If you have a five gallon pot, boil 4 gallons or so and then use fridge temp top off water.

 

[Mikethepoolguy]

Yeah. What they said above.

 

[HomebrewMTB]

THA is a very light beer. I would highly recommend adding most of the extract as late in the boil. And yes, you can steep in a little bit of water but you'll want to boil in as much volume as you can handle. Tip: you can steep in a small pot and start your boil in your big pot to save time.

 

[Sardoman]

THA is a very light beer. I would highly recommend adding most of the extract as late in the boil. And yes, you can steep in a little bit of water but you'll want to boil in as much volume as you can handle. Tip: you can steep in a small pot and start your boil in your big pot to save time.

Following this advice will yield a lighter colored beer, but can also result in extraction of more alpha acids from the early hop additions, leading to higher IBUs.

 

[HomebrewMTB]

Following this advice will yield a lighter colored beer, but can also result in extraction of more alpha acids from the early hop additions, leading to higher IBUs.

That's debatable. Some say wort gravity makes a difference while others say it doesn't. I really wouldn't worry about utilization too much especially on an IPA. The NB Dead Ringer (THA clone) extract recipe calls for 1 oz at 60 and a very popular all-grain recipe here also uses 1 oz at 60. Both get rave reviews. I would highly recommend the late extract addition but wouldn't change the hop bill.

 

[jonmohno]

Add as much water as you can and half your extract,then last 10 min add the rest of your extract.Or 2/3 @60 1/3 of the dme @10 . Or just dump all the dme in if you do a fuller boil-if you want.Basically the more dme/lme you use with less water, -you risk some color variation along with twang or carmalization.Maybe. Some people like either way.
I just brewed something similar- all grain though, or at least 2 hearted based, my centennials were only 6% aau's, since i was limited to 1 0z(2 gallon batch) i made a smaller gravity and used b .5 oz centennial ( which would be 1.5 oz for a 5 gallon batch,though) for bittering. I could have used some cascades to replace some but decided not.So im making something of a lighter but maltier version.Sould be interesting.