Norther Brewer Patersbier. Full Boil?

hey guys, just getting into home brewing, and am about to conquer my second batch. i have all of the important things needed for extract brewing, and hopefully will be doing AG soon. i am using an 8 gallon turkey fryer for my brewpot, and i have just made a 3/8"x~45ft copper chiller. i have been doing a ton of reading, and have gathered that doing a full boil vs partial is usually better for making beer. the patersbier kit from norther brewer is designed for a 2.5 gallon boil. should i attempt a full boil? the kit comes with specialty grains (steep for 20 minutes or until water reaches 170F), and call for adding the entire 6lbs of extract at the start of boil, then 1oz of traditional hops, boil for 60 minutes, then .5oz of saaz hops 10 minutes before the end of boil.

would it be worth it to attempt a full boil, and if so, what would i have to change? when i get home i plan to purchase beersmith and start tinkering, but was hoping someone could give me some insight first. any advice or tips would be awesome! i think i have found another addiction, i cant wait for the next brew! thanks in advance!

Doing a full boil is a good idea. You'll have to calculate your initial boil volume based on expected boil-off rate and target volume to ferment. And you'll probably need to adjust your hops additions to account for the gravity of the boil. Beersmith can help with both of these.

And a worthwhile addiction it is!

If you're not familiar with Beersmith ... I'd recommend first plugging in the recipe to BS as written. Until you want to learn how to specify your equipment, just uncheck the "Set Boil Volume Base on Equipment". First specify the lower boil volume. Record the estimated IBUs. Then manually change the boil volume to the full initial boil. It's probably reasonable to just use ferment volume (e.g. 5.5 gal) / 0.90, which assumes a 10% boil-off per hour. Then tweak the hops amount to get back to your original IBU.

I have made this beer before and did a 3gallon boil, then top off with 2gallons.
Turned out great. I like this beer alot!

Since you have a chiller, definitely do full boil. The only advantage to a partial boil is it's easier to chill by adding cold water.

I asked NorthernBrewer this same question today about doing partial vs. full boils with their kits and they replied saying to reduce the "bittering" hops by about 10-percent when doing full boils... but to leave the flavoring and aroma hops as listed in the instructions that come with the kit.

I also think it's best to be conservative with the amount of boil water you add to your kettle until you figure out your evaporation rate. You can always add top-up water to your wort if you end up with less than 5-gals at the end of your boil but if you end up with more than 5-gals at the end of your boil then you'll have to keep boiling longer to try to boil off some of the excess.

I made this kit over the summer, and did so with a full boil. I steeped the Carapils for 30 minutes at 155. I also scaled back the Tradition to .8 oz, and left the Saaz at .5 oz.

For what it's worth, the beer is damn good, you should really enjoy it. It's a great warm weather beer. I actually got another order in from NB last week. Another round of Patersbier was in that shipment. Going to brew it up at the end of the month so that it's ready to welcome in the spring.

ok, thanks guys! another question, what about late addition of the extract? its something else i stumbled upon and am wondering if i should look into more. the directions call for adding the entire contents of the extract at the start of the boil. thoughts?

Late extract addition can also be good for reasons similar to doing a larger boil. I'm surprised that this NB recipe doesn't call for it. The NB Oktoberfest does a late addition of the LME. Like doing a full boil, since late addition affects hops utilization, it might be best to let BS do the calculations. In BS you can specify the late addition of extract and it will calculate IBU for you.

Ive brewed this twice and done both early and late addition, Didn't dicern much difference in the taste but the color was lighter with the late addition.

Hex23 said:

Late extract addition can also be good for reasons similar to doing a larger boil. I'm surprised that this NB recipe doesn't call for it. The NB Oktoberfest does a late addition of the LME. Like doing a full boil, since late addition affects hops utilization, it might be best to let BS do the calculations. In BS you can specify the late addition of extract and it will calculate IBU for you.

Click to expand...

thanks hex, im in the process of figuring out this program...might take me a while! also checking out promash. northern brewer gives the .rec file to auto load into there. i see no option for late addition, etc.