bennie1986

Recipes 

I am tooling up for all grain and just finished my keggle. It occurred to me that I could boil a full volume of wort at this point instead of topping off with tap water. I was wondering if anyone else does this or of there would be an issue doing this with the extract?

Thanks!

EvilDeadAsh

Recipes 

Lots of folks have said moving to a full boil with extract made a significant improvement to the quality of the brew. You may want to lower the amount of bittering hops that are used by 20-25% but other than that it should do nothing but make it better. There are already a lot of threads about this particular topic

TheHomebrewNerd

Recipes 

You certainly could do a full wort boil with extract. In addition to increased hop utilization, you might also see some slight color impact, depending on how concentrated your partial boils were. In general, you could expect a slightly lighter final wort color with a larger boil volume due to a reduction in caramelization in the kettle. For most beer styles this won't matter much though.

One potential drawback of the full boil, is that you now have more boiling hot wort to cool before you can pitch your yeast, so you chilling times will increase compared to topping off with cool tap water. You may find the increased time worth it if the finished beer tastes better.

The Homebrew Nerd
thehomebrewnerd.com

CrookedTail

Recipes 

A full boil is highly recommended, even in extract brewing. Your beers will come out a bit lighter in color, and your hop utilization should improve.

That said you're going to need a wort chiller.

MMJfan

Recipes 

This! I started out doing full boils and I had yet to get a wort chiller. I was doing ice baths in one of those Rubbermaid keg tubs and it would take at least a half an hour to cool the wort enough to pitch the yeast. I then made my own wort chiller after my 3rd brew and my cooling time dropped to about 10 minutes!

As for which is better between full and partial boils, I can't compare as I've only ever done full boils. I just know the brew process is much smoother with my wort chiller!