larger partial boil?

Hey guys,

my first brew from yesterday went really well and is the primary bubbling away. But I had a question, related to partial boils, that I couldn't find an answer to in the forums as of yet.

Living in Chicago, our water has a noticeable chlorine scent, so I am running everything through a Brita filter before usage. When it came to topping off my 1.5 gallon boil, this was a pain, as it filtered so slowly.

My pot easily managed the 1.5 boil with no risk of a boilover, so I am wondering if for my next attempt, I should go for a 3 gal boil (since I can filter it ahead of time, then boil it in one shot)? My stove is gas and should have no trouble with it...but is there anything else I need to worry about with the kit itself? Will this affect the malt steeping, liquid extract or hop additions?
If this route is viable, do I need to worry about anything while chilling the wort? A sink of ice water got my 1.5 gal wort down to about 68 in about 20-25 minutes (but it was all the ice i had).

Thanks a lot for any advice in advance...these forums have been invaluable in the ramp-up to my first brew.

You have a couple of options...

You could boil your tap water ahead of time and store it in bottles (sanitized bottles). Boiling it should boil off any chlorine in a rather short time.

You could use bottled water.

You could filter your water ahead of time and store it in sanitized bottles or containers.

To answer the question, it changes the hop additions. You can use something like Beer Smith to scale the recipe up (keep the final volume the same, just up the boil volume with the scale button at the top) as I learned last night.

For the water problem, I just go to Kroger and spend 29 cents a gallon to get enough water plus some to do my batch. They charge you 1.29 if you don't bring a bottle with you, but if you bring your own gallon jugs, its only 29 cents a gallon.

thanks for the tip, i'll have the check that out this weekend, as i see they have a trial period.

although, my hesitation is that it would require buying extra hops in addition to that which comes in the kits. but i guess that's not really a big deal.

aubrey said:

To answer the question, it changes the hop additions. You can use something like Beer Smith to scale the recipe up (keep the final volume the same, just up the boil volume with the scale button at the top) as I learned last night.

For the water problem, I just go to Kroger and spend 29 cents a gallon to get enough water plus some to do my batch. They charge you 1.29 if you don't bring a bottle with you, but if you bring your own gallon jugs, its only 29 cents a gallon.

Click to expand...

Real quick:

As a fellow Chicago Homebrewer, I can tell you that I do a 3 gallon boil with tap water and then top off with a couple gallons of bottled spring water from Target and it tastes great (not just fine, but great).

my two cents...

aubrey said:

For the water problem, I just go to Kroger and spend 29 cents a gallon to get enough water plus some to do my batch. They charge you 1.29 if you don't bring a bottle with you, but if you bring your own gallon jugs, its only 29 cents a gallon.

Click to expand...

I get my water from Safeway, $1.99 for a 2.5 gal. container.

I'll give this a shot. I'm not a big fan of buying water, but i'll grab a couple gallon jugs, and then refill with Brita-filtered water. I can't imagine anything could get contaminated, if I sanitize the jugs, fill and seal...

SkewedAle said:

Real quick:

As a fellow Chicago Homebrewer, I can tell you that I do a 3 gallon boil with tap water and then top off with a couple gallons of bottled spring water from Target and it tastes great (not just fine, but great).

my two cents...

Click to expand...