Full boil with LME: late addition amount?

JSGT09 · 12-08-2011, 04:32 PM

Going to try my first full boil for my next batch of Irish Red. My kettle is 6.5 gallons so I'm hoping that a 5.5 gal full boil will leave me enough insurance room for boilovers.

I've been reading a lot about late addition of LME to reduce some of the caramelization. Does the amount added change when doing a full boil? I was planning on adding 1/3 of the LME to the steeped grain tea, boil for 50 min, then add the remaining 2/3 LME and boiling for another 10 minutes.

Going to have my wort chiller in for the last 10 min too for sterilization. Could prove interesting trying to stir in the late addition LME with it in there!

**boist** · 12-08-2011, 07:27 PM

Well you can always add the late addition at 15, and have 5 minutes of uninterrupted stirring..

But a better question is what are you trying to achieve: If you are boiling your whole volume with third of your DME, your wort concentration will be quite low, which means that you should (technically, at least) get better utilization out of your hops (This is an opposite situation to when you boil all your DME with half volume of water and get low utilization). Other than that, I don't think there's any reason not to just boil the whole thing at once. True, it doesn't need it, but it wont hurt, and may just save a bit of hassle.

medusa1066 · 12-08-2011, 07:42 PM

I was just thinking about this. From reading, it seems the major benefits of late addition come only with Partial Boil Extract, not the full boil. With a Partial Boil, adding half of your LME gets you close to OG, the late addition brings you to 2X OG, then you dilute to volume. I think I am going to stick with Full Boil Extract....for now

**unionrdr** · 12-08-2011, 08:10 PM

It's not to concentrate everything to equalize at top off. It' does get better hop utilization in a partial boil with part of the extract malt.
But the most important reason with late extract additions is to get lighter color & cleaner flavor/aroma. It flat out works.

m750 · 12-09-2011, 03:26 AM

Are there the same benefits of late additions when you are doing full volume boils?

**unionrdr** · 12-09-2011, 12:57 PM

I think so. The same reactions would occur regardless of volume. It's more like the amount of extract in the boil & length of time it boils.

JSGT09 · 12-09-2011, 01:12 PM

I'm not a huge fan of overly hoppy beer, so if I did a late addition with a full boil I will get a much stronger hop flavor than a full boil with the entire amount of extract correct? Kind of sounds like this is an either/or sort of thing...either do a full boil with no late addition or do a partial boil with late addition. I would think that hop utilization would be about the same with those two methods.

I've also read that when doing a full boil to reduce your bittering hops because of that reason:

Adjustments for full-volume boils. If your system is designed for a full-volume boil of 5-6 gallons, make the following adjustments to the procedures in the following steps:

* Step #1 - collect 5.5 to 6 gallons of water in the kettle.
* Step #5 - use 15% to 25% less bittering hops (any hop additions during the first 30 minutes of the boil) than called for in the kit inventory - e.g., use 3/4 to 7/8 oz instead of 1 oz; all other boil additions remain the same
* Step #6 - use a wort chiller to cool the wort
* Step #8 - add only enough water to reach 5 gallons

stevedasleeve · 12-09-2011, 01:43 PM

FWIW there is plenty of evidence suggesting that gravity and hop utilization are *not* correlated in the way you are thinking. Check out Basic Brewing radio for an experiment on just this!

I will add that full vs partial boils, pre and post dilution, caramelization (what a horrible word,) hops utilization (an even more awful word!) and all that is really best figured yourself on your own system and recipes over time. I have found that much of the often repeated brewing wisdom is surprisingly different on my system.

Steve da sleeve

**davcar74** · 12-09-2011, 07:34 PM

+1to that. After about 40 gallons under my belt, I really started to get a handle on all of these variables and what they did when I tweaked them this way or that. My boils end up with about 3.5 to 4 gallons of wort and I have found that late extract additions, whether LME or DME made a big difference in getting a clean flavor profile. I used to add all my extract in the beginning if I was doing something dark....now even for those, I typically wait until 20 min to add 1/2 to 2/3 of the extract.

pjcampbell · 12-13-2011, 05:25 PM

What if you add 100% of the LME or DME for that matter at the end?

Do you need to add any of it in the beginning? This would be with a full boil...