I came across this online during my research into extract brewing..... I'm not sure who the author is but I felt this worth a read.......


1. Know Thyself (and Thine Brewery)
If an extract brewer wishes to brew consistently quality beer, he (or she) should get to know the details of his system and how they effect his brewing. Brew an extract version of a beer brewed by an all-grain friend or an extract clone of a beer you enjoy. Taste your beer side-by-side with the all-grain or commercial beer and note every difference you can. How do the color, bitterness, malt character and yeast qualities stack up? Once you have this information in hand, use the following information to correct or adjust for any of the problems you may be experiencing.

2. Pump Up the Volume
The biggest improvement most extract brewers can make to their process is to boil their wort in a larger volume. Early homebrewing books instructed brewers to boil the malt extract for a 5-gallon (19-L) batch in as little as 1.5 gallons (5.7 L) of water. Although this is convenient, this convenience comes at a price. Boiling a thick wort is guaranteed to darken it unacceptably and severely limit the amount of hop bitterness. No matter what volume a recipe calls for, always boil your wort at the largest volume you can manage.

These days, most homebrew shops carry relatively inexpensive brewpots. A 16-qt. (4-gallon/15-L) pot will allow you to begin boiling from around 2.75 gallons (10.4 L) down to 2.5 gallons (9.5 L) in an hour, and a little stirring as the wort comes to a boil will prevent boil-overs. At this volume, you will be able to brew light-colored beers with reasonably high levels of hop bitterness — especially if you use the extract late or Texas Two-Step technique. (For more information on these techniques, see the October 2004 issue of BYO).

If your situation permits, the best solution is to get a “turkey fryer” propane cooker and a 7-gallon (26-L) or larger pot. This will allow you to boil 6 gallons
(23 L) of wort down to five gallons (19 L) in a typical 60 minute boil. With this setup, the lower color limit you can achieve is determined by the color of your extract and your beers can be as hoppy as any all-grain beer.
Sometimes your brewpot isn’t the limiting factor. Sometimes your kitchen stove doesn’t kick out enough heat to boil much wort vigorously. Two things can help in this regard. First, close the lid on the pot almost all of the way. You should never boil wort in a completely closed pot. However, you really don’t need the lid cracked very much to provide an escape for the volatile chemicals you want to boil off.

A second potential helper in this regard is a coil immersion heater. Many travel places sell these devices (for around US $15), which are just a small heating coil that plugs into the wall. The coil is meant to be placed in water, tea or soup to heat them up. On their own, these would be useless for wort boiling as they don’t produce enough heat. However, used in conjunction with a stove, they can increase either your boil vigor or the amount of wort you can boil vigorously slightly. Just the movement induced in the wort by having a hot spot inside the kettle can be a good thing. Keep in mind, though, the potential shock hazard of these devices. I wouldn’t use one unless it was plugged into an outlet with an interrupt.

3. Other Dark Forces
Boil volume is not the only factor in wort darkening. Another problem is the potential to caramelize partially dissolved malt extract. When you stir malt extract into hot water, it does not dissolve instantly or evenly. Little “blobs” of extract can remain intact for quite awhile, even when everything looks dissolved. These “blobs” will sink to the bottom of your brewpot and can caramelize there. So, whenever you stir in extract, turn off the heat and stir until you don’t see any undissolved bits of extract — then stir for another minute or so.

Two other factors in wort darkening are heat and time. On a commercial scale, most brewers used to aim to evaporate 10% of their wort in an hour (these days, the target is even lower). When boiling a small amount of wort on a stove, it’s easy to evaporate a much higher percentage. If this is happening, turn down the heat or increase the amount of wort you are boiling.

The longer you boil your wort, the darker it gets. So, boil your wort only as long as the longest hop addition requires. And, keep in mind that some liquid extracts have already been boiled (although others have only been evaporated). Liquid malt extract only needs to boil (or steep at temperatures over 160 °F/71 °C) for 15 minutes to sanitize it.

4. Fresh Extract
This point does not need to be elaborated on, but I can’t leave it out, either — always use fresh malt extract.

5. Got Grains?
In order to get the colors and flavors you want from your specialty grains, without extracting excess tannins, you need to do one of two things — either steep in a small amount of water or in weak wort. A small amount of water means 1–3 qts. of water per pound of grains (2.1–6.3 L/kg). If you steep in a larger volume than that, add malt extract until the specific gravity is over 1.010 before adding the grains. And finally, rinse with a very small amount of water — 0.5–1 qts. of water per pound of grain steeped (1–2 L/kg) works well (see “Steeping,” in the May–June 2005 issue of BYO for more on this topic).

In extract brewing, the extract manufacturer collects the wort and concentrates it. When the wort is concentrated into extract, some volatile compounds are lost. To brew the best extract beer possible, you need a way to replace at least a portion of them. The simplest way to do this is to make some wort yourself by doing a partial mash in your brewpot.

To do this, add some 2-row pale malt to your recipe. For every pound (0.45 kg) of pale malt, subtract 0.53 lbs. (0.24 kg) of dried malt extract or 0.73 lbs. (0.33 kg) liquid malt extract. When making a 5-gallon (19-L) extract beer, I usually shoot for “steeping” a total of around 2–2.5 lbs. (0.91–1.1 kg) of grains, including base malt and specialty grains. Steep this liquid in 1.5–
2 qts. of water per pound of grain (3.2–4.2 L/kg) at 148–158 °F (64–70 °C) for 45–60 minutes. After increasing your boil volume, I feel that doing small partial mashes — which are really just glorified grain steeps — is the technique that will help extract brewers brew better beer. Note that partial mash wort is also typically more fermentable than that of malt extract, which can help if your beers consistently finish at a high final gravity.