brewingmeister

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+1 also for deliciousness and preventing spoilage.

__________________
............Alright Brain, you don't like me, and I don't like you. But lets just do this, and I can get back to killing you with beer......~Homer

BrewMU

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A lot of good stuff, but the gravity of water under standard conditions is 1.00 by definition.

cincydave

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Afterbrewer....Thanks for your ideas, be they that different or not. I think the original idea of the thread is a good one. I'm still pretty new to this and always looking for different ideas and ways of doing things and would encourage other people to post their "out of the box" ideas as well. For example, I've never heard of no boil, unless using pre hopped kits like Coopers. So keep those new ideas coming. Whether people choose to try them or not is up to them.

pelipen

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I wouldn't say there is anything earth shattering in the post. The OP has mixed and matched various methods to craft a personal style of brewing.
When I read alternative methods, I thought, cool maybe somebody is mashing 80 lbs of grain in a preheated coal fired cement mixer... Or the folks using washing machines... Home scale continuous fermentation... Or something

What does "bother" me is the 2 minute hop boil in water. Adding hops over 60 minutes at various intervals, types, and quantities, allows a hop profile to be created with predictable results based on gravity and volume. Doing it in a 2 minute window would be difficult to replicate, and one may as well use hop extract. Opinion.

squirrelly

Recipes 

I avoid oxidation, but my method is hardly revolutionary. In fact it's the same procedure Vinney at Russian River uses.

I purge each keg or bottle with C02 prior to filling, push the beer to be racked through the siphon with C02, and pressurize the conical with C02 prior to transferring. Actually Russian River hits each vessel 3 times with C02 prior to beer being introduced, but even I don't go that far.

As far as the rest of the above mentioned steps, meh, if it works for you then brew strong brother. I brew to compete, and I would be quite curious to see how your beer placed after the above listed steps. I'll stick to my 5 hour brew days of smoking my pipe, enjoying time with my wife and son, and letting the dog run around like a fool. Brew days for us are just 5 hours when the whole family gets to enjoy the semi outdoors. (the brew house is a closed structure, but once the burners are on and the grains are mixed in its very hands off.) wait, that sounds pretty revolutionary!

brewchez

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I wonder if the boil in water alone is releasing a small but higher than normal amount of poly phenols from the hops. Thus contributing to perceived bitterness vs. true IBUs. Not saying its good or bad either way, FYI. The thing about this hobby that is always great is the wide range of techniques and "work arounds" people use. Cheers to any way you brew it as long as you brew it! Brew on!

HollisBT

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Even if that were the case, they still wouldn't be absorbed into the wort when you added it all in there. They would be absorbed at the same utilization factor that the wort would allow.

Also, I would think that the additional boiling might give a chance for some of the alpha to boil off. Albeit, a minuscule amount, but the idea of boiling it in just water is to get a minuscule increase in utilization.

snowcrash

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I agree with cincydave. I enjoyed reading alterbrewer's post. I have only brewed a few batches in my first year of brewing(2 extract, 1 partial and I just did a BIAB ) and I was very strict about following the "rules" of brewing. Whether that was the instructions that came with the kit or what I have read in this forum or others. The BIAB was the first batch where I was not so uptight about brewday. Not that I am too uptight about it, I enjoy brewday-day either way. I had never heard of no-boil either. (what I haven't heard of could fill several libraries). I like hearing new ideas. I may incorporate one or more of them into my brew.

My 2 cents.

BrewMU

Recipes 

The hops boiled in water-v-wort issue goes to alterbrewer. It's really not a brewing question per se, it's a solution chemistry question: solubles, be they from hops or anything else, dissolve more readily in a less saturated solution of equal volume. That's why IBUs account for boil gravity.
One thing's for sure - whether you think the op was earth shattering or not, it stimulated a lot of interest and discussion. Let's face it, you can google search any topic and find HBT threads to learn from - the only reason to actually sign up is to bs and trade opinions about beer and brewing.
Hoppy brew year.

Calder

Recipes 

The OP talked about boiling in a small amount of water for a few minutes. Most calculators take into account the boil volume and time too.

...... Latest that is being touted, is that all the IBU calculators are wrong, and IBU extraction is dependent on time only, and not on gravity/sugar-concentration. I have yet to see any substantive information on this, but it seems to be getting some traction.