Hopped molasses ??

Ive been making a few different cans of coopers hopped malt extract, and ive noticed it smells identical to molasses!! If molasses is made from sugar cane/beet, it got me wondering... is coopers sellling molasses ? ? or malt extract ?! This might be stupid, but hey the mollasse scent is identical!

http://www.coopers.com.au/homebrew/hbrew.php?pid=1&id=114

Anyway, I was reading the thread on 10 tips to make an extract brew better, and one thing that caught my eye was the larger boil volumes. The instructions say to boil only 2 liters of water to dissolve the can of extract, or use 4 liters warm water. Say if I boiled 4 liters of water for 10-15min would I be bringing out the hoppness of this malt extract ? ? Or does this rule apply to using fresh hops only ?

I'm pretty sure Coopers uses malt extract, not molasses-- they're one of the few breweries (maybe the only one?) that also makes malt extract kits.

Since you are using hopped malt extract with a short boil time, a larger boil volume is not really necessary. If you were conducting a longer boil (60 minutes or more) and adding your own hops, then it would make a difference in both reducing caramelization of sugars (darkening the wort and introducing some caramel flavors) and increasing utilization of the hops (more efficient bittering).

-Steve