Full volume extract boil

Now that I have a 29L boil kettle, I was thinking that I could boil an extract brew with the full volume of water added, rather than boiling the partial volume and adding cold water at the end to bring the volume up. Is there anything wrong with this suggestion?

I assume that I would need to adjust my hop quantities to suit the boil volume?

BlightyBrewer said:

Now that I have a 29L boil kettle, I was thinking that I could boil an extract brew with the full volume of water added, rather than boiling the partial volume and adding cold water at the end to bring the volume up. Is there anything wrong with this suggestion?

I assume that I would need to adjust my hop quantities to suit the boil volume?

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No. I assume you have a way of cooling the wort down fast? When you do a full hard boil like that you want to create a good hotbreak (coagulation of protiens that form at the bottom of the kettle). Well you would want a good cold break as well. You see you chilled the wort pretty fast before by adding cold water which is a good way of forming a good cold break, but now with no more water to add a counter flow or immersion chiller needs to be implemented. You could always stick it in a bath of ice, but it will take more than a couple of minutes to get down to temp. Cold break is importent because it will lower the production of fusel alcohols (which you dont want) in your brew.

I assume that I would need to adjust my hop quantities to suit the boil volume?[/QUOTE]

Im not sure what your asking. Even when you did your boils before you still should of added the amount of hops you wanted to the boil. If you were only making 2 or 4 gallons before and now you want to do a 5 gallon recipe then yes you would need to adjust your hops. Hope this helps

BlightyBrewer said:

Now that I have a 29L boil kettle, I was thinking that I could boil an extract brew with the full volume of water added, rather than boiling the partial volume and adding cold water at the end to bring the volume up. Is there anything wrong with this suggestion?

I assume that I would need to adjust my hop quantities to suit the boil volume?

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I'm in the same boat you are...fixing to start doing full boils, but not quite ready to move up to all grain. I was wondering if I need to adjust the hops too, but from the hop utilization table in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing, it appears that going from 3 to 6 gallons, the utilization rate isn't going to increase more than 5 to 10 percent at most, so I'm going to leave it alone for now.

That said, in the all-grain recipes in Beer Captured, they suggest cutting the bittering hops back by 22% on average.

I'm doing this too, as it will prepare me for all grain.

Besides a chiller, I suggest that you get an oxygenation or aeration system. When you do full wort boils, all the oxygen is gone from the wort and needs to be replaced. I found that simply spashing the wort is not cutting it.

When I did partial boils I would dump in one or 2 galons of supermarked spring water. If you don't boil it, it would provide enough oxygen for a healthy fermentation (any of them are actually enriched with oxygen). The FDA may even reqire that it is sanitary.

Kai

Most of my early batches were extract full boils. I've used a chiller right from the beginning. You need to reduce the bittering hops a little, but not the aroma or flavor hops. It isn't a big change unless you've been using 2-3 oz. of bittering hops.

I like doing partials for Milds and other low bitterness ales.

an immersion chiller for 5 g will do the trick. or, put a lid on the kettle and put it into an ice bath in a large wash tub. stir the ice in the tub around the kettle often, and add ice if needed. reducing the bittering hops will be required due to the full wort boil. if you use promash, or any other brewing software, you can make those adjustments with ease. i second the aeration of the wort after the full 5 gallon boil. your yeast will appreciate it.

A wort chiller (counterflow) is definitely on my radar for must have stuff. Incidently, there's a great counterflow wort chiller project in the Jan / Feb 06 issue of BYO.

Could you boil 4 gallons and add one gallon of Ice at the end? Wouldn't you have almost the same effect?

billybrew said:

Could you boil 4 gallons and add one gallon of Ice at the end? Wouldn't you have almost the same effect?

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I've always been a bit wary of using ice to cool. I'm not convinced it would be sanitized.

billybrew said:

Could you boil 4 gallons and add one gallon of Ice at the end? Wouldn't you have almost the same effect?

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I did the math on that, and you actually need 2 gal of ice to bring 212F down to about 80F

Kai

I do extract almost full volume boils (room for ice). I drop in a gallon of ice and stick the pot in a sink of cold water (ice water in summer). I am suspicious of supermarket ice (and I'm cheap). I make my ice the day before, boil tap water for a bit and then toss it in a clean metal container (or leave it in the pot) saran wrap the top (make sure you use the good stuff, rated up to 160c) let the water cool, toss it in the freezer. It has worked pretty well so far.

If you are using a prehopped kit then a full boil is not always a good idea.
The reason you full boil all grain is (amongst othe reasons) is to get sparge volume down to the required fermentation volume requid (no need to do this with extract) and to give the bittering hops chance to flavour the wort. (No need to do this with extract kits) It would also be detrimental to some pre hopped kits.
If you are using unhopped extract then it would be a good idea but you'd need to add more water than the instructions suggested.
The only reason I can see for doing a full boil is to drive of chlorine and sanitise the water.
You can make an immersion wort chiller for around £10 worth of microbore central heating or gas pipe. 8 or 10 mm.

Hello perhaps you could help me, I brewed an all grain batch and used the splash method to oxygenate the wort. The beer has a real bitter taste and the 12 bottles have yet to carbonate and it has been over a month since bottling . the stuff I kegged did of course carbonate but it still has a harsh taste . There was about a 36 hr or longer lag time also.
I suspect poor oxygen content. ( I have since purchased a system to oxygenate the wort) What do you think?? This was my first full boil.

How did figure that out? I would really like the formula if you dont mind!

BlightyBrewer said:

A wort chiller (counterflow) is definitely on my radar for must have stuff. Incidently, there's a great counterflow wort chiller project in the Jan / Feb 06 issue of BYO.

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I made this counterflow chiller and it is pretty sweet. It cost me about 40 bucks and I would recommend it. I added a little more length of copper to each of the T's to allow some room for the garden hose to be attached. I haven't used it yet on a boil but looking forward to it. Saved me some cash!

I made a counter flowchiller also and it works great. I can chill down to 70 F as fast as it transfers from the boil to the fermenter. in fact I monitor the temp as it flows ( I use a thermocouple)and usually have to restrict the water to keep from chilling too far.

Maybe I am dense here but I don't see any gain to doing a full boil. Any money gain used to save on buying water would be used up by the extra energy used to boil and extra dollars/effort to reoxygenate. Not to mention calculating the reduction of bittering hops.
If it doesn't make better beer, I would see no reason to do it at all.

But supposedly it does make better beer...better hot break so clearer beer, and less carmelization so lighter beer. That's the story anyway.

I haven't built my counterflow chiller yet, so currently I take my 68qt brew bucket with lid on, and stick it in the sink. I pull the drain so that it drains slwoly and fill the sink/tub with cold water. I let it drain out then repeat. Cools 5 Gallons down in 30 minutes. The brew pot is thick aluminum, that may make a difference with the heat transfer.

EDIT: My Brew kettle is 38qts (8.5gal) not 68qts. (That's the one I have my eye on.)

Prowler 13 said:

Maybe I am dense here but I don't see any gain to doing a full boil. Any money gain used to save on buying water would be used up by the extra energy used to boil and extra dollars/effort to reoxygenate. Not to mention calculating the reduction of bittering hops.
If it doesn't make better beer, I would see no reason to do it at all.

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You're not being dense. I asked the question since I have just been given a 29L boiler for Christmas, and I wanted to know the advantages / disadvantages in boiling the full wort volume for extract. I am actually setting up to do All Grain brewing (hence the need for a 29L boiler) but I was still interested to know about boiling the full volume extract should I want to do a quick brew one day with my new toy.

orfy said:

You can make an immersion wort chiller for around £10 worth of microbore central heating or gas pipe. 8 or 10 mm.

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I did this over Christmas, and yep, it only cost about a tenner for the pipe. As for the 8mm-15mm expansion joint, (the two inches of 15mm pipe was lying around, so free), the screw attachment for the 15mm pipe, the outdoor tap head to screw onto it, and the hose attachment to fit to the tap head.... and that's doubled up at each end of the chiller, and then there's the hose itself, and the shower bath attachment to attach the hose to the taps, I'm sure it was at least triple that altogether! Still cheaper than buying one though.

If you have the capacity and also have a chiller of some sort you may as well do a full boil. Otherwise the minimum for decent hop utilization is going to be around 3 USG,(2/1/2imp gal).

If you dont have a chiller a smaller batch is going to be easier to cool in a reasonable time frame in a kitchen sink full of water. (I used to put small frozen bottles of water around the boil pan in a sink full of water, it worked fine, I keep them in the freezer to this day).

Dont add water to the wort to cool it doesnt have the desired effect.

I've produced perfectly acceptable beers boiling up small volumes infact its hardly worth getting the boiler and chiller messed up for.

At last, I'm brewing with my new electric boiler and counterflow wort chiller - doing a full volume extract boil with first gold and cascade hops.



Set-up - notice the spray bottle armed in case of boil-overs!



Reaching boil



Hops in and boiling...

I must say, I'm having a blast...and posting on this forum makes the 60 min boil go much quicker! :rockin:

Hey well done man.
It's good to have the kit.

I will probably do a brew towords the end of next week.

Well, I only managed to get 4 Imperial Gallons from the brew (from 22-24 litres initially - I lost count so it was probably closer to 22 litres), and I broke my thermometer.

But, the wort chiller worked very well, and so did the boiler. I re-used the waste water from the chiller to wash up. All in all, a good experience.

One tweak, I need to get an insulating jacket for the boiler to speed up heat up time and retain heat / save energy.

Can't wait to taste the beer!

You probably didn't allow for enough evaporation in the boil, I've made that mistake before myself and it's takes a bit to get it just right.
I plan on doing an all grain tomorrow, in the american northwest style wheat.

Did you ever pick up that tubing from the V'Bells BB? There is nothing wrong with a pouring a few kettles of hot water over the hops to recover a few lost pints (when it comes to extract brewing that is).

It was my first time using this boiler (29 ltr), and I was a bit hesitant to fill it up too much in case of boil overs. Plus, the hops soaked up a lot, and I didn't want to disturb the gunk too much to squeeze the extra out.

Next time, I'll be a little bolder!

Blimey DAAB, you read my mind as I was posting (re the hops that is)!

...and no, I forgot, thanks for reminding me. The dog is definitely getting a walk around Eling tomorrow!

Cheers DAAB.

Blighty if you have too much evaporation and your final volume is low then your FG should be high enough to allow you to top up the final amount with extra water to take yor volume back up to 5g.

Hope that make sense.

My OG was 1.050 with 3.2kg of John Bull LME in the boil.

That's good.

I'm not sure what the target was but I'm sure it'd still taste good at 1050.

Depending on the final gravity after fermenting 1050 could give you a 5%+ beer. If you added the water to take it to 5g and dropped it to say 1040 then I'm sure it'd still be about 4%.

It depends what's most important to you. But if the beer kit is designed to give 5g then adding the extra water will still give you the % and body it's designed to.
Your brew will have more body and a higher %.

It's gonna taste spot on no matter what you do.!!!!!!

My first brew for 2006 is fermenting...