Partial Mash Today - Quick Question about ME addition

Good Day!

I'm brewing a PM later today and have 2 quick related questions about my Malt Extract addition.

I ordered a Moose Drool clone kit from AHS and I usually select DME, however I must have forgot to change my selection and I received LME instead.

To help here are my ingredients:

2 LB base malt
1/2 Lb Choc Malt
1/2 Crystal
1 OZ Black Patent

In the past I've done my mash and added some of the DME and left the rest for a late addition in the boil. Since this is LME in one big plastic tub I don't want to fool around and split it up.

Is there any reason why I shouldn't just add all the LME at for the last 15 minutes of my boil? Will I get enough fermentable sugars for hop utilization out of my Mash?

Also, related is I have to add a 1Lb of Malto Dextrin. This can go in for the last 15 minutes of the boil right?

To sum up, should I add my 5 1/2 Lb of LME at the beginning or late into the boil? How about the Malto Dextrin?

Thanks in advance,

Brad

Short answer: Adding the LME and sugar at 15 min. should be fine.

Keep in muind that with late malt additions, the hop utilization goes up. (Hops produce more bitterness) There must be some sugars in solution for the hops to be effective - the partial mash should produce enough.

Barely gave you the short answer; here's the long one.

bce22 said:

Is there any reason why I shouldn't just add all the LME at for the last 15 minutes of my boil? Will I get enough fermentable sugars for hop utilization out of my Mash?

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Depends on the volume of your boil. Utilization is a function of wort gravity. A partial mash resulting in a boil volume of 2.5 gallons yields a wort of 1.032 OG, given 75% efficiency. I don't know what hops of what AA% you're adding when, so it's impossible for me to compute your IBU. That's enough to get good utilization, that's for sure. But the exact utilization - and, from that, exact IBU - is dependent on AA%, time boiled and boil gravity.

Also, related is I have to add a 1Lb of Malto Dextrin. This can go in for the last 15 minutes of the boil right?

To sum up, should I add my 5 1/2 Lb of LME at the beginning or late into the boil? How about the Malto Dextrin?

Click to expand...

You can add both at that time, sure. Heck, you can add them at flameout, before you start chilling. You don't really need to boil; you just need to bring them to sanitation temperature, which is 10 minutes at 180+F. In my experience, if I add the stuff at flameout, by the time the chilling process gets below 180, a sufficient amount of time has passed, because it takes time to dissolve all the extract and get the chilling stuff hooked up and running.

Good luck!

Bob

Bob, this is GREAT information.

I'm using 1 gallon for my mash and 1.5 gallons for my sparge. I used the 1.25 quarts/Lb of grain forumal which is 3.75 quarts for mash and rounded up to 1 full gallon. Sparge = 2 qt / Lb so that is 5 quarts. Just gonna round up.

Hops =

1 oz Goldings at 4.50% (60 min)
1 oz Mt Hood at 5.20% and 1 oz Willamette 4.50% (15 min)

I was thinking about adding another gallon or so of water after sparge to bring my boil up to 3.5 gallons. Obviously if I do this it would lower the gravity of my wort further and that may bring it low enough to not be able to get proper hop utilization.

I may just bite the bullett and pour some of the LME into the wort when I add water to get my boil size to closer to 4 gallons.

Thanks!

Okay, it's obvious Forrest wants you to add the extract to your concentrated boil.

Given a 2.5-gallon boil, the following is some numerical analysis.

Without extract: Boil gravity (BG) is 1.032. IBUs total 35.

All Extract Added: BG = 1.109. IBUs go down to 27.

1/2 Extract added: BG = 1.067. IBUs go down to 32.

Not much difference there. The difference between 35 and 32 IBU is not so vast that the average taster will no the difference; frankly, I don't think many people will detect the difference between 35 and 27, especially in a dark beer with roasted-grain flavors.

I'd stick with the 2.5-gallon boil and add the extract late. There's no real need to increase the boil amount, as you're not going to concentrate the wort that much. You'll probably boil off a half-gallon or so by the end of an hour, so make sure to figure your top-off water carefully.

Cheers!

Bob

Bob said:

Okay, it's obvious Forrest wants you to add the extract to your concentrated boil.

Given a 2.5-gallon boil, the following is some numerical analysis.

Without extract: Boil gravity (BG) is 1.032. IBUs total 35.

All Extract Added: BG = 1.109. IBUs go down to 27.

1/2 Extract added: BG = 1.067. IBUs go down to 32.

Not much difference there. The difference between 35 and 32 IBU is not so vast that the average taster will no the difference; frankly, I don't think many people will detect the difference between 35 and 27, especially in a dark beer with roasted-grain flavors.

I'd stick with the 2.5-gallon boil and add the extract late. There's no real need to increase the boil amount, as you're not going to concentrate the wort that much. You'll probably boil off a half-gallon or so by the end of an hour, so make sure to figure your top-off water carefully.

Cheers!

Bob

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Thanks Bob!

This is exactly what I did!