Hop Bursting + Late malt extract = 30 min beer? Please provide advice

It is hot this week in Columbus, Ohio. I need to brew a beer for and event a little over a month away, so I was thinking APA. I need to brew today, but it is WAY too hot for me to want to spend a hours outside mashing, sparging, and boiling.

I was thinking about doing an extract beer. I have read that late addition of the extract improves hop utilization and reduces kettle color pickup. I have also been wanting to try Hop Bursting. Instead of a 60min bittering addition, I would do a large late charge at 15min left in the boil and then again at flameout. All the bitterness would come from those additions.

With that in mind, why would I boil plain water for 45 minute before the 15min hops and the 5min DME? Couldn’t I just fill my kettle with water, soak my steeping grains till it reached 170deg, reach a boil and throw in my 15min addition, wait 10 min, dump in the DME and kill the heat 5 minutes later. Can anyone see any issues with my 15minute boil? So long as there is enough hops to bitter it in 15, everything else make sense, right?

I would think that would work fine. As long as you boil for a while, long enough to kill any lactobacillus on the grain and to get some utilization on the hops, I would think a 20 minute boil would be adequate.

Try brewing in NC all summer long... If it is a time issue go extract...but if you have time, get out there and brew AG!

That said...I think as long as your bring it to a nice hard boil this should work fine.

Your process is fine, as Yooper stated. Tasty said in of the "Can You Brew It" podcasts, that the best extract beer he ever brewed was only something like a 15-20 minute boil.

The biggest thing is a full wort boil and using quality ingredients that fit the style of beer you're brewing. So no Amber LME, 8 oz. of C120, Hallertau hops, etc. - However, you will need A LOT of high alpha hops to achieve the necessary IBUs with no traditional bittering addition and only a 15-20 minute boil.

Thanks for the feedback. I am rich with lots of high AA hops right now, and I want to use them before they get old anyhow.

I think I'll give it a try tonight. I'll let you know in a month!

I completed this brew last night. It took just over an hour and fifteen minutes from the time I lit the burner until the time I had everything cleaned up. The actual boil was only 15 minutes, with a short flame out to mix in the malt extract at the 5 minute mark. Two ounces of Chinook, Cascade, Bravo, and Columbus hops averaging around 12% AA and an OG of 1.044.

I plan to serve it July 21st, so we'll see!

I'd be very interested in the results as I found that moving my (extract beer) boils down from 60 to 45 was a great improvement in my beer (less chances of the dreaded 1.020 FG curse)... I have been considering moving down to 30 minute boils!! I'll stay tuned.

So I have early results. I crashed for 4 days after a 3 week primary with US-05. It is in the keg now, carbing at 10psi. When I tried it out of the fermenter and I was pretty disappointed. The beer was plenty bitter, but it lacked the aroma and flavor I'd hoped this process would retain. I blamed the slow cooling with warm tap water in my IC.

Well I was pleasantly surprised to find after a couple days worth of carbing the smooth flavor and aroma I'd hoped for are there and the bitterness seems less obtrusive. It is a good deal closer to what I wanted than I thought it would be. The beer is still very green so we'll see how it goes.

As a side note, the beer is really cloudy. It was the first pull from the keg, but I crashed it well and racked it carefully. Maybe it is chill haze.

I will give it a couple weeks and try a pint. I will even include a photo.

ChiefHophead said:

The beer was plenty bitter, but it lacked the aroma and flavor I'd hoped this process would retain. I blamed the slow cooling with warm tap water in my IC.

Well I was pleasantly surprised to find after a couple days worth of carbing the smooth flavor and aroma I'd hoped for are there and the bitterness seems less obtrusive. It is a good deal closer to what I wanted than I thought it would be. The beer is still very green so we'll see how it goes.

Click to expand...

What was your final recipe? I wouldn't blame slow cooling. I do it all the time for my post boil aroma steep. It gives amazing results if you use enough hops and the rest of your recipe is sound.

ChiefHophead said:

As a side note, the beer is really cloudy. It was the first pull from the keg, but I crashed it well and racked it carefully. Maybe it is chill haze.

Click to expand...

After you cold crashed, did you pick up the carboy and move it to a location where you could rack from? I avoid this by crashing and racking in the same location. That way I don't move the carboy and stir up everything that dropped out of suspension, thus negating the benefits of crashing. That, and I rack with a nylon bag wrapped around the cane. On a less serious note, it could also be an abundance of hop oils, which is normal when you use a lot of hops in a homebrew.

What was your final recipe?

Click to expand...

I don't have the exact recipie. Its sounds like a joke, but my dog literally ate my recipie. She loves paper. She ate my W2 last year.

It was a pound of caramel 40/60 mix steeped until 170deg. Then 1oz of a hop blend (equal parts Bravo, Chinook, Columbus, and Cascade) once a boil was reached. I boiled for 10 min, cut the flame, and quickly stirred in enough DME and LME (light and golden) to bring it to an OG of about 1.050 before tossing in a second ounce of the hop blend. Five more minutes of boil and then immediatly began cooling with the IC. The flame was on for just about 30 minutes total, 15 min of which were boil time.

After you cold crashed, did you pick up the carboy and move it to a location where you could rack from? I avoid this by crashing and racking in the same location. That way I don't move the carboy and stir up everything that dropped out of suspension, thus negating the benefits of crashing.

Click to expand...

I did move the fermenter a couple feet, but am exceptionally careful to avoid jostling it. This method does not disturb the cake unless i bump it, which i did not do this time.

You shouldn't have a very bitter beer (or one high in aroma/flavor). At 2 oz. total hops without a bittering addition, you didn't use enough hops for a 5.3 gallon batch of APA, 5.5 gallon (15 minute) boil with no top off water. And your crystal additions total 14% of the malt bill, which should give a perception of sweet, not bitter.

At 1.050 OG, you should have roughly:

5% ABV
10 SRM (Color)
46 IBUs Tinseth
27 IBUs Rager
24 IBUs Average
20 IBUs Garetz

... Guessing the 20-ish IBUs is more likely here. What you did wasn't exactly hop bursting.

Thanks for your feedback and for doing the math! Im not sure that I can ever add enough hops

The plan for the keg was to serve it to strangers, so I did not want a very bitter beer. I figured I'd get a little bump in utilization boiling in water with only steeping grains for 10 minutes. Plus there were probably 3-4 minutes at near boiling temps while I added the malt before resuming the boil. I expected some isomerization to occur during that period.

There was very little consideration made for the science on this project. I had 2oz of hops left over long with the DME I use to tweak gravity on my AG batches. If this makes drinkable beer I'll be happy. If it makes good beer I'll have to try a more controlled expiriment with better timing and more calculated additions. Of course, more hops too.

I'll continue to follow up on this as the beer conditions.

I figured I'd get a little bump in utilization boiling in water with only steeping grains for 10 minutes.

Click to expand...

I was not clear in the previous post. What I meant to say here was that there was very little sugar in the first 10min of the boil, only what came off of the steeping grains. This reduced sugar level should have slightly increased my hop utilization during those 10min.

Reduced sugar increasing hops utilization? Forgive this lowly apprentice's confusion, but I thought you needed some sugar to optimize hops utilization. Can I get further expoundment on this issue please?

Thanks -

Normzone, I haven't see an experiment to prove it but my understanding of the general consensus is that with a very weak wort (say 1.010) you get better utilization than plain water but as the wort increases to typical beer levels, the utilization drops. I believe there is still a lot debate on this topic.

Without any math to support the theory I still like it - thanks for your reply.

Here's a thread on hop utilization, including an experiment where the conclusion was that wort density didn't matter.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/partial-boils-latest-basic-brewing-radio-podcast-166353/