Full wort boil vs. concentrated???

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ochocki

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I have seen this thrown around a lot in this forum, a full wort boil versus a concentrated boil. I am about to become a novice homebrewer and will be starting with an extract kit. The big reason for this question is price, if a full wort boil with an extract kit really helps the beer, I will likely spend more to get a larger brewpot. However, if it really doesn't make to big a difference I will simply buy a 5 gallon brewpot. Also, it seems that a wort chiller is really only usefull when doing a full boil, I could be wrong about this though.

Can someone please clarify my thoughts for me

Thanks:mug:
 
Wort chillers are always useful, but they become necessary with larger volume boils.

With a concentrated boil, you get less utilizatoin of bittering hops. Meaning, to get the same bitterness in the beer, a partial volume boil needs either (a) more bittering hops or (b) a longer boil time to match what a full volume boil would get.

If you plan on sticking to extract brewing, a 5 gallon pot will probably be fine. That's what I use, and it's only becoming obsolete now because I plant to go AG, and need to boil closer to 8 gallons.
 
I've been doing partial boils b/c I don't have the BTUs to do a full boil and I've really liked the outcomes. I do plan on doing full boils once I go AG and have some propane burners I can fire up.
 
Doing a full boil definately requires a wort chiller, and will almost definately require more power than your kitchen stove can muster (i.e. a 50,000+ BTU propane burner). If you want to invest in that, go for it!

One word of caution though, a full wort boil will extract more bitterness and hop flavor from the hops. If you are doing a kit, and the instructions say to boil 2 gallons, if you do a 5 gallon boil you'll have noticeably more hoppiness. For a hoppy beer that's great, but for a balanced or mildly hopped beer, you may not want that...
 
There are two schools of thought on the first kettle purchase. 1) You'll always be able to use that 5gal pot for something while brewing, but you will need a bigger one later if you expand, and; 2) Get the biggest one you can find right off the bat because it's a one-time purchase, and chances are you'll expand anyway.
You can boil 2 gallons in a 7gallon pot as well as you can in a 5 gallon pot.
 
The only thing I notice is I don't have the room on my stove for a 7 gallon pot, the 5.5 gallon I just purchased fits good on my stove. A 7 gallon one would be to tall to work with.
 
So for a novice, a typical 5 gallon pot will be ok for most or all of extract kits? I'm definently not ready to buy a BTU burner for huge boils. I know I will likely have to upgrade in the future, I guess I will tackle that when i get to it.
 
A 20/30 quart pot will be fine for extract partial boils. And they can be converted into mash tuns at a later date. I still do them on occasion.

If you have some way of getting 2 gallons of water down near freezing, you won't need a chiller.
 
Funny, I've read the less boil water the MORE (better) hops utilization...as long as a small amount of malt is used.

I boil 1.5 gals, add 1 lb of malt, then hops (hardly ever over 1.1 oz whole hops at 3.4% AA and/or .75 oz at 4.5%), boil for 45 mins, add remaining malt/Irish Moss, etc., boil for 15 mins, sparge hops, add 4 gals of water that's been in the freezer for 4-5 hours. Temps are down to the high 60s to mid 70s in less than 3 mins.
 
I brought this up before and it's still debatable. If you dump all that cold water into your batch and they all come together in the primary, there is no way that you can remove the hot/cold break. From some readings, it's best to try and remove most of that stuff before fermentation. Granted, it's good to have some it there, but not a lot.
 
homebrewer_99 said:
Funny, I've read the less boil water the MORE (better) hops utilization...as long as a small amount of malt is used.

Well, there's a lot of stuff going on in the water and for bitterness you want the alpha acids to isomerize so they can dissolve in water. The more stuff going on in the water the harder it's going to be for the alpha acids to isomerize and dissolve. Up the volume, thus lowering the concentration of sugars, proteins, etc will aid the isomerization process.

Think about trying to dissolve salt in water. If you have a little salt, it will dissolve very quickly. But if you have a lot of salt, it will take longer to dissolve.

So, the bigger the boil the better for getting bitterness from hops.
 
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