how to boil wort properly

Iv noticed there are alot of variations and different ways to go about boiling wort and i thought you could share your advice and techniques here. i have a simple recipe and i would like to do it right my first time.

So far this is how i plan on doing it. It is for a 4.5 liter batch.

Cascade hops 5grams at 60 minutes then 4 grams at 30 minutes left of boil.
DME added totally at 30 minutes left of boil.
1 tbsp organic molasses for minerals, because im using reverse osmosis water. Ill add this at 30 minutes.

The only thing with this way is that the 60 minutes hops will be in plain water for 30 minutes. i dont know if thats good.

Are you not doing any grains or anything? I don't see what the problem with that would be...

If I remember correctly you need some of the sugars in the water for the hops to bond with I believe you should use at least a third of your extract initially then add your rest as a late addition. I'm not positive but I believe that is what I read here in multiple threads when searching for hop utilization.

Evonnida said:

Are you not doing any grains or anything? I don't see what the problem with that would be...

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No. No grains. This is an experiment. My other batch will have granola bar grains. But im just worried about the order im putting my ingridients in. like should the malt go before the hops and can the hops be boiled first in just water.

Copying my post from another thread running now:

The brewing radio guys did an experiment boiling hops in just water and adding all the extract late, then compared to boiling with extract for the full time. They actually liked the batch with the hops boiled alone better, and it had good bittering. They also seemed to debunk the theory that it would add grassy off flavors.

That being said, it seems standard practice for most folks to add somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 of their extract at the beginning on a partial boil.

Haha buy some milled grains

I normally do all grain, but sometimes make extract batches for IPAs and wheat beers. When i bre extract, i always boil my hops in plain water and add the extract in the last 10 minutes then bring it back to a boil and chill. I never asked anyone and assumed everyone did it this way.

sapo59 said:

Haha buy some milled grains

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Buy milled grains! ?!?! But i have perfectly good preservative free granola bars lol. i have 700 grams of granola bars and they expire this month, now how could i knowingly throw out food AND beer ingridients! One of the main ingrdients is actually barley extract so i will see what comes of them. They will steep for 45 minutes at 160f. I started a thread about this called home made beer kit.

shanek17 said:

Iv nlticed therd are alot of variations and different ways to go about boiling wort and i thought you could share your advice and techniques here. i have a simple recipe and i would like to do it right my first time.

So far this is how i plan on doing it. It is for a 4.5 liter batch.

Cascade hops 5grams at 60 minutes then 4 grams at 30 minutes left of boil.
DME added totally at 30 minutes left of boil.
1 tbsp organic molasses for minerals, because im using reverse osmosis water. Ill add this at 30 minutes.

The only thing with this way is that the 60 minutes hops will be in plain water for 30 mknutes. i dont know if thats good.

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I don't add dme or lme until flameout.

I find I don't get so much of a caramel flavor in the finished product. I can definitely say hops utilization is improved doing it this way as I have experimented on a couple tried and true recipes.

wolfstar said:

I don't add dme or lme until flameout.

I find I don't get so much of a caramel flavor in the finished product. I can definitely say hops utilization is improved doing it this way as I have experimented on a couple tried and true recipes.

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thats really interesting about hop utilization, I actually heard the same thing said on another forum. They basically said that adding the hops into straight water actually allows more polyphenols and other things to be extracted from the hops, so essentially you can get more bang for your buck by boiling hops in water. Heres exactly what was posted on the other forum,

"Grassy /hay flavors come from myrcene and other hop oils will boil off after a while. Boiling hops in wort will extract tannins and other polyphenols but this is limited because of the low PH. During the boil proteins from the malt adsorb onto the polyphenols and then precipitate out. Boiling hops in water will extract more polyphenols because of the higher PH and they wont precipitate out because of the lack of proteins. You will get astringency like you do in tea. How much I can't say and it's hard to tell what the effects in beer will be. It might come across as a rough maltiness or barely be noticed. You can limit the amount of polyphenols by using a smaller amount of HIgh alpha hops."

unionrdr said:

^^But was this partial mash? A lot of steeping grains? Hop tea will only go so far ime. My partial mashes use 5lb of grains as 50% of the fermentables. I use that for hop additions & add extract at flameout.
And as we said in two other threads of yours shanek,you def can't replace grains with granola bars. The grains in the granola bars aren't malted like brewing grains. And your 200g of DME def needs to be increased,as I mentioned in the other threads. I've founsd through experience that some extract/fermentables will give better untilization,but not much is needed.
This makes thread #3 for the same question. It's starting to seem like you'll keep making threads until someone tells you what you want to here. These ideas sound like they're coming from a noob jumping off the deep end.
Or this is TSA under another name trolling.

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Yes this will be a partial mash, here is my recipe

Granola and Dark DME Beer Recipe:

4Liter-1gallon size batch

45min - steep 300g of granola - 160F then sparge with hot water
60min - 1 tbsp organic mollases (adds minerals since Im using reverse osmosis water)
60 min - 50g dark DME
20 min -350g dark DME
15min - 4grams Irish moss - there are proteins in the granola, I thought the IM would help.

7grams cascade sterling hops 60 min
7grams cascade sterling hops 20min

Well thats fine if you dont agree with using granola in substitute for grains, but that is apart of this experiment. Im not looking for permission to use the granola, was simply getting feedback from everyone regarding the experiment and how to maximize my success. This is my first time trying techniques such as boiling and steeping grains and boiling hops and Iv noticed many people have different ways to go about this, so I made this thread to find out how to properly go about doing that, that is all.

And im going to increase the DME to 400 Grams to increase the quality sugar and hopefully add more to the overall beer.

To be honest, I would rather eat expired granola bars than put them in my beer. Granola is usually mainly composed of oats, so I would just add cooked oatmeal instead.