night before first brew

I am looking at the instructions to the midwest kit i bought

Hank's Hefe Weizen: There once was a homebrewer named Hank. He liked to brew Hefe Wiezens. He gave me a bottle of his favorite recipe one day, a traditional Hefe Weizen. I drank it. I liked it. I brewed it. Now it’s your turn to brew the legend of Hank. Wyeast is recommended for best results. Our ingredients for this recipe include: 6 lbs. Wheat liquid malt extract, 1 lb. of Light DME, 8 oz. Carapils specialty grains, 1 oz. oz. bittering hops, yeast, priming sugar and a grain bag

they tell me to add a minimum of 1.5-2 gal of water. but goes on to say
if you have a larger pot and can boil a larger volume do so

*slap* how am I to know how much now to start with?

I have a 7.5 gal brew kettle on a turkey fryer

any help will be good

tanks

Do a full 5.5-6 gallon boil, it will boil down to around 5 gallons in the end.

The 1.5-2 gallon minimum is needed to utilize the hops, so thats why they say that. Lots of people will only be able to do a 2 gallon boil and thats really the bare minimum.

The nice thing about extract brews is that realistically you can boil any amount up to your full boil without throwing off your recipe - you just top off in the fermenter whatever amount you are short of the recipe size. Remember that you will boil off some liquid during the 60 minute boil - how much I don't know because I haven't done a full boil myself but I'd expect a gallon or maybe a little more.

2 things to keep in mind:

1. Your hops utilization will increase the more you boil, so you could end up with more bittering than you anticipate by doing a full boil. Use beersmith or beercalculus to determine how much to reduce hops additions for a full boil.

2. If you boil the entire amount, you'll need an efficient way to cool your wort since you're not adding cold top-off water to help drop the temperature. I usually boil 3 gallons (it reduces down to 2.5 or so), cool for 10 minutes in sink water bath then I top-off with pre-chilled water in the fermenter. This usually puts me at 70-72 and ready to pitch. If you don't have a wort chiller of some sort I would probably not recommend a full boil unless you have a large deep sink and a lot of ice to assist with cooling.

My personal noobie experience: Cooling even 2 gallons of hot wort with the ice bath
method can be a bear. It works. But be sure to have plenty of ice on hand.

Good luck.