Does boil size matter?

When doing extract recipes I've noticed some recipes want me to boil 2 gallons of water for the wort while others call for boiling up to 4 gallons (all for 5 gal recipes). If I end up adding additional water at the end to equal 5 gallons, does it really matter if I boil 2 or 4 gallons (or anywhere in between) with my extract and hops in my brewpot?

I brew on an apartment stove so it takes a while to bring all that water up to a boil. I would love to make my brew time shorter if possible, which boiling smaller amounts of water would allow.

Right now I am brewing Blood Orange Hefeweizen: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f85/blood-orange-hefeweizen-98579/index2.html

This calls for 4 gallons of water, but that would take forever for me to boil and cool down. Can I get away with just boiling 2 1/2 gallons and adding extra water at the end?

Thoughts?

dude, size always matters

It's best to boil as much of the fermentation volume as possible. i.e. 5 gallon fermentation, ideally you would boil the entire 5 gallons

Boil size certainly does matter, but not in the way that when one recipe calls for a 3 gallon boil, you couldn't do a 4 gallon boil. The bigger the boil, the better. Smaller boils work better with lower gravity beers. Once you're adding 10+ lbs of DME for a big beer, you really shouldn't try that in less than a full size boil.

Thank guys, I trust your wisdom. I am adding the additional water to my boil now.

The reason bigger is better is because of the hops. A boil can only utilize so much hops so lets say yo want a BIG IPA with 100 IBU's.

In a 2.5 gallon boil you will get the 100 IBU's but then yo will have to dilute the wort with another 2.5 gallons of water and thus - you end up with only 50 IBU's

A big 5 gallon boil you will get all 100.

Basically.

Speaking of that recipe a few things to comment on that I would change.

Wait - probably has all this in the original thread - disregard the below if you want LOL (where in WI are you from??)

#1 - I would only add 1/2 the the extract in #1 Save the other half for the last 10 minutes. Your beer will have a lighter color and taste the same.

#6 - I don't think "stir the wort clockwise for 2 minutes as you build up a whirlpool effect. Stop stirring and allow the wort to sit for 10 minutes." is necessary - certainly won't hurt but . . . why??

#11 - that is way to fast. Wait 3 weeks if you can. 11 days is much too short

Thanks.

I am from Appleton.

New question:

I assume cooling the wort while covered is probably the best idea. Though, can I leave my wort uncovered while it cools (to cool much faster), or am I really risking an infection?

Thanks to the OP for asking this question. I recently got a bigger pot and did a full boil on my last batch, but I was wondering what the difference really was.

Grinder12000 said:

The reason bigger is better is because of the hops. A boil can only utilize so much hops so lets say yo want a BIG IPA with 100 IBU's.

In a 2.5 gallon boil you will get the 100 IBU's but then yo will have to dilute the wort with another 2.5 gallons of water and thus - you end up with only 50 IBU's

A big 5 gallon boil you will get all 100.

Basically....

Click to expand...

Won't you end up with even less than 50 IBU's. The dilution will take it down by a factor of two (but it will also take down the OG), but doesnt the hop utilization drop when you have a higher gravity boil? I know that if you boil 60 minutes with 1.100 vs 1.050 you lose about 36% of your bittering
See Palmer's Table Here
I think this means that if you are doing a small boil at high gravity and then diluting there's actually a bit of a double-whammy in terms of the amount of hops you need for high IBU's (this can be helped somewhat by adding a lot of the extract right at the end of the boil, AFAIK).

If you are only able to do a 2 gallon boil and want a high IBU beer, dry hopping is always an option.

JebCkr said:

If you are only able to do a 2 gallon boil and want a high IBU beer, dry hopping is always an option.

Click to expand...

Dry hopping doesn't affect IBUs at all.

For larger boils you can use less hops so either stick to the given recipes or use software to recalculate the amount of bittering hops to use.

+1 that bigger is always better. Doing bigger boils (even with partial boils) was one of the things that's improved my beers a bunch. If you have a 20qt pot and use Fermcap (foam control), you can boil close to 4.5 gallons to start with, which is pretty nice.

If you have trouble getting that much liquid to boil on the stovetop, there are lots of helpful ideas in this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/improved-boiling-stovetop-53683/

Also +1 for the late extract addition - saves color and IBUs!

-Octang


Anything you can do to keep the cooling wort away from open air is always a good thing. Me personally, I have a kettle with a spigot which I hook up to a counterflow chiller, which flows into 10ft of copper tubing sitting in ice water, which then flows into my carboy. Never touches the air and cools 5 boiling gallons to 70 degrees in under 10 minutes.


I went a little hardcore though.:rockin::rockin::rockin:


That said, assuming you're using reasonable sanitation steps, it's hard to get contamination. Make sure everything that touches the beer is sterile and maybe invest in a box of latex gloves and you'll be fine.

A "trick" to avoiding contamination is making sure you have a healthy starter so the yeasties will eat up all the food before the bacteria can even start. Survival of the fittest!

^^^ Thanks, that is my biggest problem right now, cooling down the wort. It takes me forever. I really want a wort chiller, but that isn't really in the budget at the moment. I think on my next batch I'm going to sanitize some frozen plastic water bottles and place them in the wort to cool it faster. I've read about some other people doing that and it seems like it can't be anymore risky than letting your brew pot sit uncovered in your bathtub for an hour (which is what I am currently doing).

Octang said:

^^^ Thanks, that is my biggest problem right now, cooling down the wort. It takes me forever. I really want a wort chiller, but that isn't really in the budget at the moment. I think on my next batch I'm going to sanitize some frozen plastic water bottles and place them in the wort to cool it faster. I've read about some other people doing that and it seems like it can't be anymore risky than letting your brew pot sit uncovered in your bathtub for an hour (which is what I am currently doing).

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yeah, that's rough. Have you looked into a DIY chiller? I really like my CFC. I use a pump but I didn't always. I used gravity before to keep costs down. When I did partial boils with extract, I used to use ice as part of my dilution water. That at least speeds up the chilling process. Try about 10 lbs of ice into the wort, then top up with water as necessary for 5 gallons. There is a slight possibility of infection as some will tell you, but I never had a problem.

EuBrew said:

dude, size always matters

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this man has a point.

I've been doing small boils and late addition brewing since 1994 (8 years before the LA technique was "created"...).

I always place 4 1 gal jugs of PUR filtered tap water in the freezer for 4-5 hours prior to the time I need them to top off my primary.

According to Papazian's TCJOHB Hop Utilization Chart, it basically states to keep your water to DME ratio 1:1, that's 1 gal of boil water to 1 lb of malt boiled with 1 oz of hops for 1 hour will result in the maximum extraction of hop bitterness (30%).

With that in mind I've always boiled at least 2 gals with 2 lbs of malt and the hops as recommended by the recipe with great results.

The icy freezer water constantly drops my temps down into the 60's to low 70s so I can pitch my yeast right away.

IMO, placing frozen water jugs in your wort is not a good idea. Depending on the plastic, the heat may melt it and the ice/water will get into your wort.

I am currently doing 3.5 gallon boils on the stovetop and cool to 70 in about 20 minutes using the following method:

( should say my kitchen sink is huge - it's double basin, but one side is really big and the other really small).

1. Just before boil is done, fill sink with the coldest tap water you have to level necessary to make it full once the pot is placed in (this takes some experimenting).
2. Place something in the bottom of the sink so the pot doesn't sit flat on the bottom. There is a lot of surface area there and you want as much contact between the water and the pot. I use three table knives in a Mercedes/Peace Sign arrangement.
3. Put the pot in right off the stove. Add water to fill sink if necessary.
4. Stir the water to encourage maximum heat transfer (the rate of heat exchange is greater, the greater the temperature differential, which is why we don't "waste" ice or cold water at this step).
5. Fill a bucket with enough water to re-fill the sink. You want to do this so you can re-fill as quickly as possible. Filling the sink with the faucet takes forever...
6. When the temperature of the water in the sink is getting warm (about 90), remove the pot and drain the sink.
7. Put in half the water needed and then the pot. Follow by putting in ice (I'm not sure how much - I use about half what our ice maker container holds) and topping with water to fill the sink.
8. Once the temperature of the wort has dropped to about 90, put in primary and add water that you have pre-cooled in the fridge to 35.
9. Voila! 70 degree wort in about 20 minutes.

If you have lots of ice or room for a lot of water in your fridge, you can use fridge water and ice for both steps. You could probably get it down to 15 minutes or maybe even less if you did three batches instead of two.

Also, I am using a SS pot, I imagine Aluminum would be even quicker.

You can make your own wort chiller out of some copper tubing that you'd get at homedepot or any hardware store.

It should come arranged in a spiral. You can hook up the spiral to your boil kettle or a modified 5 gallon cooler with some silicone tubing and then put it in some ice water in a bucket. Gravity pushes it through the tube and into your carboy. Assuming you already have a kettle or cooler with a spigot, the copper and silicone tubing won't be more than $20.


How do you currently cool your wort?


*silicone tubing isn't necessary, but I like it's temperature resistance and not imparting any funny flavors when hot liquid is run through it compared to other types of tubing.

btw, you can always sterilize some aluminum foil either with sanitizer or by putting it in the oven, and use that to cover your boil pot while cooling.

Cory, I am going to look into making my own wort chiller.

Currently I am cooling my wort by placing my brewpot in my bathtub in cold water but that takes forever. I no longer cover the brew pot as it cools bc that just makes the cooling process that much slower.

For the next brew I am doing I have 1 1/2 gallons of water bottled in the refrigerator so that will be extra cold when I mix it with my wort. I am also going to get a lot more ice to toss in the bathtub. Hopefully I can cut down my cooling time considerably.

Grinder12000 said:

The reason bigger is better is because of the hops. A boil can only utilize so much hops so lets say yo want a BIG IPA with 100 IBU's.

In a 2.5 gallon boil you will get the 100 IBU's but then yo will have to dilute the wort with another 2.5 gallons of water and thus - you end up with only 50 IBU's

A big 5 gallon boil you will get all 100.

Basically.

Click to expand...

"A boil can only utilize so much hops..."

This is true.

"In a 2.5 gallon boil you will get the 100 IBU's but then yo will have to dilute the wort with another 2.5 gallons of water and thus - you end up with only 50 IBU's"

This is false.

If you calculate the 100 IBU for your 5 gal. final volume, you will not end up with less than your 100 IBU by boiling 2.5 gal. and adding 2.5 gal after the boil. You will have to add more hops to get your 100 IBU in a concentrated boil as your utilization will go down with the increased gravity of the concentrated boil.