How big of a difference would it really be?

I have a recipe I got from Hombrewer_99 and it calls for a 1.5 gallon boil. I have a 60qt pot and would rather do a full boil. How big of a difference would it make really?
The recipe calls for 6# of DME and only .5oz of Hallertau hops (6%AA) for 60 minutes. That's it.

If I was doing a full boil instead of the 1.5 gal. could I just cut the hops boil down to say 30 minutes? Or something along those lines.

I have a demo seat of Promash but I have not had much time to play with it to figure this stuff out.
Any help here would be great.

FSR402 said:

I have a recipe I got from Hombrewer_99 and it calls for a 1.5 gallon boil. I have a 60qt pot and would rather do a full boil. How big of a difference would it make really?
The recipe calls for 6# of DME and only .5oz of Hallertau hops (6%AA) for 60 minutes. That's it.

If I was doing a full boil instead of the 1.5 gal. could I just cut the hops boil down to say 30 minutes? Or something along those lines.

I have a demo seat of Promash but I have not had much time to play with it to figure this stuff out.
Any help here would be great.

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You've got time to write that post and monitor the board for replies, but no time to just figure it out in ProMash?

Lemme assist: start a new recipe. Enter your variables: boil time, boil volume, hops, malt. Take a look at your #'s---IBU, OG, SRM. Then change some of the variables---up the boil volume, lower to boil time. See how the IBU's, OG, and SRM have changed.

It's just that easy. Good luck!

Evan! said:

You've got time to write that post and monitor the board for replies, but no time to just figure it out in ProMash?

Lemme assist: start a new recipe. Enter your variables: boil time, boil volume, hops, malt. Take a look at your #'s---IBU, OG, SRM. Then change some of the variables---up the boil volume, lower to boil time. See how the IBU's, OG, and SRM have changed.

It's just that easy. Good luck!

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LOL I'm at work and I don't have promash here. I'm stuck on 70+ hours a week.

Thanks for the tip. When I get home tonight I'll play around with it some more.

IIRC, Bill does a late addition for most or all of his extract, so the efficiency he gets from the 60 minute addition is pretty high even with the small boil. The bigger issue - and why you do need to run this through ProMash anyway - is the AA% of the hops. Bill may be using 5%; if you've got 4%, you need to use more to get the same target IBUs (for this style, ~15 or so).

It probably wouldn't be an issue changing the boil time from 60 to 30 minutes, but that's one variable (boil time) you usually leave constant. You might get a bit more residual hop flavor than you expect doing a shorter boil time for the hops. Again, not an issue with a half ounce of Hallertau - but if you were doing a beer with a couple ounces of Chinook, you'd be able to tell the difference with a change in the bittering addition's time.

Ok, so I put the info in.
6 gal boil, 6#DME, 1oz Hallertau pellet hops (3.2%aau) with a 60 minute boil and it says that I would have 14.3 IBU's.
Bill's recipe calls for a IBU of 7 so it looks like I need to play around with that a little.

I just did Baron's Basic Hefe recipe, in the database, at about 15IBUs. Spot-on, IMHO. I'd hesitate going too much lower.

the_bird said:

I just did Baron's Basic Hefe recipe, in the database, at about 15IBUs. Spot-on, IMHO. I'd hesitate going too much lower.

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Bird, did you decoct it? Any pointers? I might tackle it this weekend, if either one of the f***ing stubborn beers in my primaries decides to ferment out...

All interesting. The hops I use at 60 mins is 6%, but I only use 1/2 oz which equals 3%.

That's in the low range to acquire the sweet banana flavor versus the bitter flavor. Somewhere around 7 IBUs should be right. I know a lot of other recipes state 11-15 IBUs, but this is more bitter than I like.

Any help assisting the OP is appreciated...even by me.

Bird: There is an issue changing the boil time from 60 to 30 mins. I found that out in a previous batch. What it was is at 30 mins there were some hop flavoring. Good news is that about 2 weeks in the keg they have almost gone away.

Bike N Brew said:

Bird, did you decoct it? Any pointers? I might tackle it this weekend, if either one of the f***ing stubborn beers in my primaries decides to ferment out...

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I did, it was my first (and so far only) decoction. It's hard to tell how much of a difference it made, since I haven't done it without the decoction, but it came out really, really nicely.

Bill, didn't mean to imply anything negative about your brews, just that with my experience, the 12-15IBUs was just about right to have a real good balance.

the_bird said:

I did, it was my first (and so far only) decoction. It's hard to tell how much of a difference it made, since I haven't done it without the decoction, but it came out really, really nicely.

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What schedule did you use?

the_bird said:

I did, it was my first (and so far only) decoction. It's hard to tell how much of a difference it made, since I haven't done it without the decoction, but it came out really, really nicely.

Bill, didn't mean to imply anything negative about your brews, just that with my experience, the 12-15IBUs was just about right to have a real good balance.

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Wasn't thinking anything negative.

I can concur with your comment about the 12-15 IBU range, but that's also relative to the amount of malt used. Many HW recipes I have seen use between 8-9 lbs of malt. I only use 6 lbs of DME and some grains. The lower malt, the lower the hops can be used.

My recipe may not be perfect for a lot of people, but it works really well for me.

I'm on vacation, so I don't have my notes with me for specifics. I did an acid rest at ~110, infused up to protein rest at 122, pulled a decoction, boiled for twenty minutes or so, added back and missed my temp, so pulled it again, decocted again, missed my temp again...

5.5 lbs of Pils, 5.5lbs of wheat, crappy efficiency, OG was around 1050 or so - not that big.

the_bird said:

I'm on vacation, so I don't have my notes with me for specifics. I did an acid rest at ~110, infused up to protein rest at 122, pulled a decoction, boiled for twenty minutes or so, added back and missed my temp, so pulled it again, decocted again, missed my temp again...

5.5 lbs of Pils, 5.5lbs of wheat, crappy efficiency, OG was around 1050 or so - not that big.

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Thanks, pretty much exactly what I'm planning...right down to missing the temps

Enjoy the vacation!

homebrewer_99 said:

Wasn't thinking anything negative.

I can concur with your comment about the 12-15 IBU range, but that's also relative to the amount of malt used. Many HW recipes I have seen use between 8-9 lbs of malt. I only use 6 lbs of DME and some grains. The lower malt, the lower the hops can be used.

My recipe may not be perfect for a lot of people, but it works really well for me.

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Again thank you for the recipe Bill. I'm goin to try and hit the lower end of the IBU's on this like you did. I drank two pints of this Heffe that my buddy wants to clone and there really was not much for hops in it. So I'm thinking you were on the right track.

Was this the corndog hefe recipe? WHen I did it, it came out pretty nicely, but I did it pretty much exactly to Bill's recipe. I have since started using some brewing software and I have found that "theoretical" IBU's near 13 are closer to the specific hefe I try to reproduce (Franziskaner hefe-weisse). I use about 6-6.5 lb wheat DME in my version.
Good luck, let us know how it comes out!