Late Extract Method Question

I had a thought about late extract additions and wanted to see if anyone had done it this way and if it worked. The thought is to dissolve the extra DME that does not go in the boil at the beginning in the top off water.

So as an example after wort starts to boil I would pour some hot water in my fermentor and dissolve the extra DME in there, topping off with cold water when dissolved and then pouring my chilled wort into this after the boil.

Does anyone see any potential problems with this that I am not seeing?

I don't see any real problem with this but I would boil up water in a pot and mix the DME in there instead of in the fermenter. The water will be much hotter and you will not be scratching your bucket while stirring.

Last time I did an extract I added the DME at flameout directly into my brew pot. Worked fine and the DME dissolved just fine.

Nurmey said:

I don't see any real problem with this but I would boil up water in a pot and mix the DME in there instead of in the fermenter. The water will be much hotter and you will not be scratching your bucket while stirring.

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Good point.

Last time I did an extract I added the DME at flameout directly into my brew pot. Worked fine and the DME dissolved just fine.

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My reason for wanting to do it this way is two fold. I have been doing it where I add the extract in the last 15 mins. I don't like this way of doing it because adding the extract usually kills the boil and sometimes it takes longer to get the boil going again than there is time left.

I was just reading some threads on late extract additions and found out that a lot of people are adding the remaining extract at flameout. I started thinking about this and the problem I see is that I recently made a wort chiller and so adding the DME at flame out seems like it would be a little difficult to dissolve it in there with the wort chiller also in there. It just seems like too much stuff.

So my thought was to just dissolve the DME in the top off water but I wanted to see if anyone had actually done this. I can't see any reason that it wouldn't work, but than again I'm fairly new to this.

TonyAngelo said:

My reason for wanting to do it this way is two fold. I have been doing it where I add the extract in the last 15 mins. I don't like this way of doing it because adding the extract usually kills the boil and sometimes it takes longer to get the boil going again than there is time left.

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If you are going to add the extract at 15 min. You should stop your timer, and start it back up when you get back to boiling.

The only problem I see with your idea is the small possibilty of infection. I wouldn't take the chance but if you're fine with it, go for it.

double_e5 said:

If you are going to add the extract at 15 min. You should stop your timer, and start it back up when you get back to boiling.

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So if I do this is there anything I need to do to account for how ever many extra minutes the hops are in there?

you change your total IBU's from the hops because the lower the gravity the higher the utilisation of the hops will be. Potentially you could end up less bitter. Hop Utilization Page
As for the infection risk, you should really boil the DME for 10 minutes to kill anything residing there. Wheather or not thats in water that's then added to the boil, or to the boil itself shouldnt make too much difference...

you change your total IBU's from the hops because the lower the gravity the higher the utilisation of the hops will be. Potentially you could end up less bitter

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Not really. See:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/estimating-bitterness-algorithms-state-art-109681/#post1209409 for a rundown of the latest science courtesy of John Palmer on Basic Brewing Radio.

At any rate, he's going to wind up _more_ bitter if anything by decreasing the amount of ME (hence break generated) in the boil.

As for the infection risk, you should really boil the DME for 10 minutes to kill anything residing there.

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People say this but I'm not really sure why. The FDA-approved procedure for heat pasteurization of liquids only requires raising them to 161F for 15 seconds See:

US FDA/CFSAN - Grade "A" Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (2003 Revision): Appendix H. Pasteurization Equipment and Procedures

Is there some reason that this would be insufficient?

SumnerH is trying to say(or I think anyway) RDWHAHB it'll be fine either way.Just much more scientific.

I wouldn't worry too much if I was brewing a stout or wheat beer, but I do a lot of IPA's and APA's with a lot of late hop additions and this seems like a good way to maximize hops utilization towards the end of the boil.

I just wanted to make sure my thinking was correct. I will probably give it a go and see what happens. Thanks for all the input.

TonyAngelo said:

I wouldn't worry too much if I was brewing a stout or wheat beer, but I do a lot of IPA's and APA's with a lot of late hop additions and this seems like a good way to maximize hops utilization towards the end of the boil.

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Again, hops utilization is independent of the gravity of the boil. The common estimation formulas get this wrong, but you won't actually get higher IBUs by doing extract-late (though your software might spit out a higher number for the estimate).

Listen to http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr03-20-08ibu.mp3 (from Basic Brewingâ„¢ : Home Brewing Beer Podcast and DVD - Basic Brewing Radioâ„¢ 2008 ) for more information.

Late addition will help with color and avoiding Maillard effects on taste, so it's still a good idea. It's probably most important for wheat beers and other lighter (in color and flavor) beers.

Your right...it will be higher utilization of hops for lower gravity boil. I reversed it so it would be higher bitterness....oops

As for the pasturization. After adding DME, the liklyhood is that some will cling to the sides and not be brought into the boil. The 10 minutes allows steam to be produced and roll down the sides of the boil kettle taking with it any unpasturized particulates...or atleast thats the idea.

SumnerH said:

Again, hops utilization is independent of the gravity of the boil. The common estimation formulas get this wrong, but you won't actually get higher IBUs by doing extract-late (though your software might spit out a higher number for the estimate).

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Alright, now this flies in the face of just about everything I've read/learned thus far. In the link supplied earlier in the thread to Glenn Tinseth's page (Hop Utilization Page) there is a table that shows hops utilization at different boil gravities.

From that table at 60 mins the the AA utilization of a 1.030 gravity wort is 27.6% and the AA utilization of a 1.080 wort is 17.6%.

Am I misunderstanding what this chart is showing or are you saying that it's incorrect?

SumnerH said:

Again, hops utilization is independent of the gravity of the boil.

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Everything I've experienced tells me otherwise. I've done the same recipe with a partial boil and then with late extract addition, and the batch with the late addition definitely had far more bittering to it.

I don't have the ability to listen to a podcast right now- can you give me the jist of the science behind it?

According to all of the sources I read, hops utilization does go down as the SG of the wort increases.

TonyAngelo said:

Alright, now this flies in the face of just about everything I've read/learned thus far. In the link supplied earlier in the thread to Glenn Tinseth's page (Hop Utilization Page) there is a table that shows hops utilization at different boil gravities.

From that table at 60 mins the the AA utilization of a 1.030 gravity wort is 27.6% and the AA utilization of a 1.080 wort is 17.6%.

Am I misunderstanding what this chart is showing or are you saying that it's incorrect?

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The latter. Listen to the link I put in that message; it's a report from John Palmer on the 2007 International Brewer's Symposium on Hop Flavor and Aroma. Hops utilization is almost entirely unaffected by the gravity of the wort.

The reason that the estimation formulas that use gravity as a factor get in the right ballpark is because the amount of break material does affect the amount of isoalphas that precipitate out (and hence doesn't contribute to the final IBUs). But if you use simple sugars (e.g. in a big Belgian), they'll increase your gravity without generating extra break material and throw off those formulas (you'll have more IBUs than they'd tend to predict). Likewise, if you use wheat or rye then you'll get proportionally more increase in break material than gravity, so the formulas will be off in the other direction (you'll tend to have less IBUs than they predict).

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/estimating-bitterness-algorithms-state-art-109681/ has my full writeup on the talk as well as some empirical numbers on measuring some recipes with 5 different formulas (Tinseth, Daniels, Rager, Garetz, Mosher) and comparing the results to the actual measured IBUs (and complete implementations of Tinseth, Rager, and Garetz for anyone who wants to see how they work or just grab the code to use for themself).

YooperBrew said:

Everything I've experienced tells me otherwise. I've done the same recipe with a partial boil and then with late extract addition, and the batch with the late addition definitely had far more bittering to it.

I don't have the ability to listen to a podcast right now- can you give me the jist of the science behind it?

According to all of the sources I read, hops utilization does go down as the SG of the wort increases.

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https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/estimating-bitterness-algorithms-state-art-109681/#post1209409 has my notes from the podcast, but it's worth a full listen--I'd appreciate any notes anyone else has.

I posted this in the hops thread, but it's relevant here.

The abstract from a 1989(!!) American Society of Brewing Chemists journal states in part:
ASBC Journal 1989 - Hop Utilization in the Brewery-An Interbrewery Comparison.
" In the range 10.5-13.5° P, no relationship between hop utilization and original gravity was found."

That's a narrow range, but it helps corroborate Palmer's implication that the lack of affect by gravity on utilization is something that's been known in commercial brewing for some time now.

What about hot break? I've always read that you need to boil your extract for at least 20 min to ensure proper protein coagulation.

So I listened to the podcast, here is a rough transcript of the relevant part (about 36:30 in the linked podcast).

James Spencer said:

Another thing you mention in your article, we have been trained through reading literature, of all kinds, that hop alpha acid isomerization is affected by wort gravity.

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John Palmer said:

We have haven't we? Like I said this conference was a real eye opener for me, it made me realize that I had been following the same assumptions of everyone else for a long time. It turns out that isomerization kinetics, that is the rate at which alpha acids will isomerize and iso-alpha and become soluble, that's pretty constant. The amount of wort gravity really doesn't effect that, hardly at all. The effect of wort gravity is actually in how much hot break material that wort generates. Alpha acids cling to break material, it will cling to the sides of the boil kettle, it will cling to the sides of the fermentor and all of that alpha and iso-alpha that clings to surfaces and clings to break material and clings to yeast as it falls out of solution all of that carries isomerized alpha acids out of solution and effects the IBU measurement. So the function of wort gravity on IBU's that we use in our calculations, it's not the effect of decreased solublization it's the effect of increased break material and iso-alpha loss as a function of gravity.

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What this sounds like to me is that the calculations we are doing to determine IBU's are flawed (we knew that already, but this is another dimension of the flaw) and that rather than wort gravity, IBU's will be affected but the amount of hot break material and other things like presumably yeast pitching rate and type.

But, if we add all of the extract at the beginning of the boil that there will be more hot break material right? In that very same podcast that question is asked.

James Spencer said:

As I understand it from talking to Bob Hanson from Briess, a lot of the protein is coagulated out of the wort at the extract manufacturer, so when you do an extract you don't have as much break material. We've been telling people if you add most of your extract near the end of the boil you'll get better hops utilization. So how does this news effect that advice?

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John Palmer said:

I think the spirit of the advice is still sound. Maybe the magnitude of the advice is reduced, because extract has already been boiled once and a lot of the hot break has come out.

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They both agreed that the late extract method is still the way to go, for reasons of color and taste and to a lesser degree break material carrying alpha acids out of solution.

John Palmer wraps up the interview by basically saying that calculating IBU's is not easy and the formula's that we've been using have been close enough so far so, RDWHAHB.

Thanks for the links.

very interesting. I was told to drop in your entire amount of extract for the full 60 minute boil. I was led to believe this was needed for many reasons. But this tread indicates another (even better) method of what....adding 3/4's of the extract at the beginning and the other 1/4th at the last 15min mark? Is that correct?

and furthermore if so, why even add ANY extract at the begining and hell, just toss all of the extract in towards the end of the boil! ????

I'm interested in this thread as well. Back in Jan I brewed a American Pale Ale (Brewers Best) but I modified it two ways: Increased the boil 2.5-3 gal to 5 gal and added 1/2 (1 can) extract at 60 min and 1/2 (1 can) extract at 15 min to utilize late extract.

I've read to decrease hops by 15% (I didn't) due to increase in boil size but IMO it is less bitter rather than more bitter than two previous batches of the same kit I've done. I'm wondering if the late addition kept some of the bittering hops from making it more bitter.