Extract Brewing IPA and boiling

Hi guys!
So i`m a little bit newbie too, and the first beer i`d like to brew is American IPA, something like GreenLight West Coast IPA or AleSmith IPA. Actually i`ve already start it, so right now it`s in first fermentation. I had Cooper IPA, Coopers Amber Malt Extract, 12 gramms of Cascade Hops by Morgan`s, 500 gramms of dextrose. During all process the only thing i`ve boiled is hop-tea for 10 or 12 minutes. Then poured it into the fermenter, then malt extract, dextrose, IPA Extract and so on.

But in many treads in Extract Brewing, i`ve red about boiling. What is this boiling??? Is it hop-tea or what. Becouse the only thing i`ve boild is hop-tea. If it is, is it OK to boil for so long, 60 minutes for example? In one of the threads about IPA i saw this:

.5 oz Warrior (15%) 60 minutes
.5 oz Cascade (5.5%) 15 minutes
.5 oz Cascade (5.5%) 10 minutes
.5 oz Cascade (5.5%) 5 minutes
.5 oz Cascade (5.5%) 0 minutes

What it`s all about and what does the percentage means? And if it is a time before stop boiling, than what is whole boiling time? Looking forward to your answers.

Hi,

So, boiling has several purposes, one of them is to sanitize (pasteurise) everything so it is a good idea to boil the extract and any water that is going to end in the fermenter (it also removes the nasty chlorine taste from tap water). Of course, this means you needs a pot or boiling bucket big enough. There are full boil and partial boil techniques as well but I won't bother you with it right now.

Now for the hops, the percentage indicates the percentage of Alpha acids. A higher percentage means more bitterness for the same boiling time (so here you see Warrior is more suitable for bittering that Cascade so if you wanted to substitute your Warrior with Cascade, you would have to put way more Cascade than the .5oz).
Now this percentage is not the only thing affectinge bitterness. I am new to brewing myself so this is not fully accurate but the boiling time affects what you get from the hops:
-More than 15 minutes boiling: Bitterness
- 5 to 15 minutes: flavour
- Less than 5 minutes: Aroma

(not sure if I haven t inverted aroma and flavour so you might want to double check)

So for the recipe you mention, I would steep my speciality grains at 70-74 Celsius for 20-30 minutes, turn off the heating source, put the extract in the boil and bring back to boiling (100 Celsius).
Then start my timer and add the hops as recommended.

Hope this helps.

Thank you. I was confused what I read somewhere that the extract can not be boiled as this will damage it. and about hops understood, thanks.

Alcodoll said:

Thank you. I was confused what I read somewhere that the extract can not be boiled as this will damage it. and about hops understood, thanks.

Click to expand...

If it is a pre-hopped extract, you should NOT boil it. If it is not pre-hopped, boiling is ok.

As was explained, boiling causes the hops to change. I won't go into great detail, but basically throwing hops in boiling water brings out their aroma. Leaving the hops in the boil more than a few minutes (5-10, maybe) will cause the hops to flavor the wort, but at the same time you boil off the aroma. Likewise, longer boils will reduce flavor and increase bitterness. That is why you have multiple hop additions to a single brew. The early additions cause bitterness, shorter boil times leave flavor and the shortest (almost no boil) leave aroma.

Some extracts come balanced with malt and hops and you just have to add water. These are pre-hopped. If you boil pre-hopped, it will unbalance the bitter, flavor, and aroma designed into the extract.

Other extracts have no hops in them and can be boiled as if you had extracted it from grains yourself.

You might've read that people wait until the last 15 or 20 minutes of the boil to add the extract (especially liquid malt extract, LME). The reason for this is that the extract has a habit of caramelizing under high heat, it darkens, therefore darkening the entire beer.

And yep, he got it right, the alpha acids take a good boil to be extracted, and they provide the bitterness (or IBUs). On the other hand, the aroma is very volatile so it will boil off in just a few minutes.

The 60 minute boil to extract bitterness is pretty much a must. The Coopers kit you might be okay with though since I'm assuming IPA extract already has hops in it.

Thanks for all your answers it`s clear enough for me now.