Boil; chamomile; irish moss; color

I have a few questions here...might be a breach of etiquette, but it beats clogging up the forum with more than one thread.

1) I boil 2 gallons of water to dechlorinate. After 5 minutes, I remove from heat and stir in the extracts until the klumps are gone/it is smooth and saturated. When I return it to the heat, I was taught to bring it up to the hops boil slowly, taking an hour or more to get there by increasing heat by small steps. Is that necessary? If I know the wort will boil at the #9 setting, can I just put it right up to 9 as long as I'm there to watch/stir it to prevent a boil-over or scortching?

2) I know that Irish Moss takes proteins+hops out of suspension, but WHY IS THAT IMPORTANT/HOW DOES THAT HELP? I assume that it is to get the hops and proteins to combine equally, but can someone say for sure?

3) I use chamomile from tea bags, and I'm happy with the result. If I switch to whole, dried flowers should I change the amount, and by how much? If I switch to fresh should I change the amount, and by how much?

4) To help get a Hoegaarden color (or simply a lighter color than what I have) to my Wit (already at 4 srm), a very experienced brewer recommended that I put in only half to two-thirds of the extracts as usual, then, during the hops boil, do this:
--With 15 minutes left, pause the timer
--Take pot off heat and pour in rest of the extract and stir until smooth, etc.
--Put back on the heat, get back to a boil, and then resume the timer to finish the last 15 minutes of the hops boil.
Does anyone have any experience with doing that? Success?

Many thanks!

1. Turn the heat up. Just watch it for signs of a boil over. Don't add hops until the wort has reached a boil and has settled down. This will keep you from having to scrape the hops off the side of the kettle after the foam rises.

2. It's to clear the beer by allowing you to keep the clumps out of the fermenter. You can't keep out clumps/protein if you can't see it. In actuality--it's a toss up as to whether irish moss = clear beer or not.

3. Happy w/ result = don't change.

4. This keeps "kettle carmalization" to a minimum. It's a good technique.

Happy brewing!

It's a fairly well known technique known as doing a "partial boil," and involves exactly what your friend said. When I started brewing, my electric stove couldn't put out enough heat to boil an entire 5+ gallon batch of beer, so I would use 1/3 to 1/2 of my extract with 2-3 gallons of water. I'd bring it to a boil per recipe instructions, and then with ~15 minutes left in the boil added the rest of the extract. It won't matter so much for a Wit, but the only thing you've got to keep in mind is that hops utilization is a function of boil gravity, and you may have to adjust your hops additions as a result.

Rob-O said:

4) To help get a Hoegaarden color (or simply a lighter color than what I have) to my Wit (already at 4 srm), a very experienced brewer recommended that I put in only half to two-thirds of the extracts as usual, then, during the hops boil, do this:
--With 15 minutes left, pause the timer
--Take pot off heat and pour in rest of the extract and stir until smooth, etc.
--Put back on the heat, get back to a boil, and then resume the timer to finish the last 15 minutes of the hops boil.
Does anyone have any experience with doing that? Success?

Many thanks!

Click to expand...

Thank you RCCOLA and Bartyen82. I just had the first taste of this last night--without doing the late extract addition--and I am VERY happy with it, so I'm nervous about monkeying with the flavor, but I would like the color to be lighter. And Bartyen82 confirms my fear: I'll have to adjust the hops to maintain the IBUs, which are currently at 20. So, I have a very precise question: How do I ensure that the IBUs remain the same? I know how to calculate, but what block of time do I use to accommodate for this "loop" in the boil? If it takes, say, 20 minutes to pour in extract, stir it until smooth, and get it back to 212 deg, do I add 20 minutes to the "boil" time for calculations? I imagine I'd be only going from about 160-170 deg back to 212, so the hops aren't in that much longer, but what number should I use?

I currently use 1.5-2 gallons of water, 6.6 lbs of liquid wheat, Malto dextrin, an hour boil, and 1 oz each of Cascade (60 min), Styrian (30 min), and Tettnanger (10 min). I know that the Tettnanger will not be effected, but by how much should I decrease the time or oz of the C and S to keep their contribution to 20 IBUs? Will it even matter?

Many thanks.

I use this recipe calculator http://beercalculus.hopville.com/recipe
You just put in the recipe without the extract you intend to use as the late addition and then change the boil volume amount to what you will use. The calculator does the rest for you. Don't worry about IBU differences after the late-addition of extract. It will be negligible.

Yep. I love beercalculus!

"Don't worry about IBU differences after the late-addition of extract. It will be negligible."
That's exactly what I wanted to hear: Do the late extract addition, and make no other adjustments to the recipe or procedure, and the beer will taste like it does now.

Thanks very much!