El_Borracho said:
Sweet that was what I was getting to. I'll just split everything into two pots, for a 5 gal boil thats 3gal each right? Since I'll probably lose one to evaporation...Just a guess..
I do extract with grains, and here is the method that I use.
1) Put three gallons into one pot, eyeball where the water level is, and bring this up to steeping temp for the grains.
2) Put the other two gallons in the second pot, and bring it up to heat also. Eyeball the level on this one also.
3) Once the steeping is done, add the hops, and about 1/4 of your malt extract to the first pot. You will need to top this pot off with water from the second pot.
4) Keep the first pot, your boiling pot, topped off with hot water from the second pot. Keep the second pot topped off with cold water.
5) During the last 15 minutes of the boil, turn off the heat, add the remaining malt extract to both pots, make sure that it is well disolved to avoid any scorching problems, and then bring both pots up to a boil and boil for the remaining 15 minutes.
I am sure that there are some out there that will give a good argument that this is probably not maximizing hop utilization, and that it would be better to have everything evenly divided between the two pots, and they are probably correct, but here is my reasoning for my method:
1) it is less hassle to keep an eye on one pot full of boiling sugar solution, instead of two.
2) the malt extract has already been cooked as long as I want it to be when it was created, I don't want to darken it any more than necessary. I put the majority in just long enough to make sure that it is sanitized.
3) last but not least, experience tells me that this works just fine, and the beers come out good.