Question About John Palmer's Brewing Process.

I just got done reading John Palmer's book How to Brew and I have a couple of questions about the brewing process in his chapter Boiling and Cooling. I'm not sure if John's instructions are specific to the type of beer he was making in the chapter, but in John's instructions he says to dissolve your DME into your brew pot and then at 5 minutes before the end of the boil to add the rest of your liquid malt extract to the boil to pasteurize it. In my kit, I only have LME (6 lb Wheat, and 3.3 lb Pilsen) and the instructions just says to add all the malt extract at once. Since I don't have any DME, Should I just go with the kit instructions, or should I go with John's method?

Another question is John adds half of his finishing hops at 30 minutes before the end of the boil and then adds the last half of the finishing hops at 15 minutes before the end of the boil. My kit comes with 2 oz of Saaz which acts as the bittering hops and aroma hops. The kit instructions say to add 3/4 oz Saaz bittering hops at boil for 60 minutes and add 1 oz Saaz aroma hops and Coriander for last two minutes. Again should I use John's method for the finishing hops doing half and half or should I do what the kit says?

By the way the kit I'm making is the Lemon Coriander Weiss from Midwest Supplies.

Thanks.

1) The reason is caramelization / Maillard reactions and hop utilization. Extract is thick, like syrup, and tends to sink in water - it can scorch on the bottom. Also, if you're not boiling a full 5 gallons, your liquid is thicker than normal - this decreases the amount of bitterness you get from the hops. So, to prevent this, many extract brewers add half of the extract at the end of the boil.

2) Timing of hop additions varies significantly across recipes. I'd follow your kit instructions here.

Thanks for the quck response. This will be a 5 gallon batch, I plan on boiling with 3 gallons of watter to compensate for water evaporate during the boil and some lost to the trub. So it sounds like for the LME I should do half and half. This won't mess anything up with the color and flavor?

I've only done a few brews so far and only used DME, but from what I've read about the liquid extract is to make sure you remove the kettle from the heat source before adding it and stir well to ensure that it does not settle and scorch at the bottom, if it does scorch you will get more caramel flavor and a darker color.

LiquidFlame said:

Thanks for the quck response. This will be a 5 gallon batch, I plan on boiling with 3 gallons of watter to compensate for water evaporate during the boil and some lost to the trub. So it sounds like for the LME I should do half and half. This won't mess anything up with the color and flavor?

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For partial boils (in your case, 3 gallons), adding some of the extract at the end of the boil will only improve color and flavor. This is because you are reducing risk of any caramelization/Maillard reactions that TyTanium was talking about, which tend to happen if you have all of your extract in a partial boil (i.e. not boiling 5-6 gallons of water at once). This helps reduce any burnt tastes, and improves the color of your beer (whereas boiling all extract for 60 minutes tends to darken the beer).