What is a full wort boil?

Hi, another question for the board. Is a full wort boil simply using a huge pot and making all 5 gallons (or whatever your final amount maybe) of wort mixed with all the water you will use for the batch? Meaning that you will cool your whole batch to pitching temp and then just put it in the fermenter rather than adding 2 gallons or so of wort to plain water? If so, what is the benefit of this. Thanks.

Yup. That's it. You actually need about six or six and a half gallons of wort to boil down to five and a quarter or so.

The reason is you get better hop utilization and maybe clearer beer. Could be other advantages, I'm not sure. Oh, and it's more fun, but that's just my personal perspective.

beer4breakfast said:

Yup. That's it. You actually need about six or six and a half gallons of wort to boil down to five and a quarter or so.

The reason is you get better hop utilization and maybe clearer beer. Could be other advantages, I'm not sure. Oh, and it's more fun, but that's just my personal perspective.

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Most of the reactions that I get is that it just tastes better and it really makes sense to me because if your boiling all your ingredients, the heat and water is pulling out every ounce of flavor out of the different hops that you use....

I know from years of cooking experience that the boldest flavors happen this way so I would say that most would tell you to be patient with the fermentation & Aging process....I would say the same for this because if you want to keep adding hopps and try for a complicated array of hop flavors, a good long boil will help.....if not, to me adding some extra boil time won't hurt....

Just keep it covered to avoid dehidration or top off your mix after your done.....the better though is the former rather then the later.....

BeerSlinger said:

Just keep it covered to avoid dehidration or top off your mix after your done.....the better though is the former rather then the later.....

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With all due respect, you don't want to cover the boil. The boil drives off some undesirable compounds such as DMS. If the kettle is covered, these compounds condense back into the brew instead of evaporating.

-a.

ajf said:

With all due respect, you don't want to cover the boil. The boil drives off some undesirable compounds such as DMS. If the kettle is covered, these compounds condense back into the brew instead of evaporating.

-a.

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DMS? I haven't heard of that....

Try a search on this forum with covered boil or a google search for DMS brewing

-a.