Question Brew Kit from Williams

Hello Everyone:

I have two questions. I just bought my first kit from Williams brewing. I purchased the Apricot Ale with a rating of beginner on the brew.

1) How long do I boil my malt before adding the flavoring hops to the wort? The directions make it seem like I boil the malt for 1 hour or possibly 5 minutes before adding the hops. Here is the exact directions on my sheet for this process:

"(after inserting the mal into 3 gallons of water)
3. Boil for 1 hour. Watch for boil overs, which are very likely when the pot first come to boil after adding the malt. Boil overs can be stopped by turning off the heat and stirring. Watch the pot 'like a hawk' when it appears to be coming to a boil, so you can avert a boil over, buy quickly turning off the heat. Add the flavoring hops after 5 minutes of boiling, and let boil for one hour before shutting off heat.

4. After the one hour boil, let the wort cool in the covered pot......."

So which is it boil for 1 hour then add the flavoring hops or boil for 5 minutes add the flavoring hops, then boil for an hour?

2) The apricot extract comes in a bottle that they suggest I add with my priming sugar right before bottling. Has anyone done this beer yet? Is it too much apricot flavoring?

Thank you.

NICK

I have no idea about the apricot flavoring, but the hops addition I can help with!

Bring it to a boil like the instructions say, and set your timer for one hour. After 5 minutes, add the hops and boil until the timer goes off.

However, it really doesn't matter. Timing really matters when you have additional hops to add at certain times. If it's only that one hopping, don't worry too much about it. If you have additional hops, you would also add them according to the schedule, usually with 15 minutes or 5 minutes left in the boil.

Now the kit is supposed to make 5 gallons of beer, should I add more water to account for lost beer during primary and secondary racking or

1) will this throw off the beer flvor?

2) do they account for this normal loss in the apricot extract?

so many unknowns for such a simple process.

Those instructions are odd. Normally the flavoring hops are added about 40-45 minutes into the boil. But, I'll go with YC on this call, since it sounds like you only have one packet of hops.

For future reference, recipes tend to time hop additions based on how long until the end of the boil, not the beginning. Sounds confusing, until you look at a typical kitchen timer. You start them to 60 minutes and they count down the time.

Top off with boiled & cooled water to 5.25 gallons before pitching the yeast. Do not add water after that. If the batch is a bit short at bottling, it's a bit short.

It's a very simple process with about 100 variations on each step.

david_42 said:

It's a very simple process with about 100 variations on each step.

Click to expand...

17 steps x 100 variations = 16551594295922433089 different ways to make beer...