How long of a boil is too long of a boil?

Last night I brewed a Rogue I2PA. After adding the LME at knockout, my yeast still wasn't ready so I brought it up to a boil and boiled it for 5-10 minutes. This is kind of a theory question for you all: What happens if you boil your extract in your wort for too long. I don't think I did boil it for too long, I'm just curious about what might happen. Thanks for the input. Go Redwings!!!!

The longer you boil an extract brew, the darker it tends to become. That color change doesn't really hurt anything unless you've mixed the wort poorly and scorch some sugar on the bottom of the kettle. Hops utilization is the bigger concern with a longer than planned boil. The longer you boil hops, the more bitter the beer becomes. With a beer as hop forward as I2PA, an extra 5-10 minutes of boiling may significantly alter the balance, since you likely added a lot of finishing hops.

Boiling longer will change your hop flavors/aroma. Your aroma additions will turn more toward flavor as time goes by, and flavor more toward bittering. You will loose some more to evaporation but not much in 5-10 minutes.

Some people will boil for 3-6 hours or more when making a baleywine, but you have to plan for the longer boil if you want your hops to work out right.

All said and done, your beer will be fine (but not as good as it could have been), you may want to dry hop to get some of the aroma back in (though it will be different than a late hop addition aroma)

It was barely a boil by the time I took it off the heat. FAR from a full boil. Just a little bit of bubbling. I planned to add dry hops to the primary anyways. Would adding EXTRA dry hops help out?

My 0.02 is follow your original plan. It is almost impossible to anticipate how the final product's flavor was changed by boiling an additional 10 minutes. I've seen many brewers go over board making correction. As the mantra goes, RDWHAHB.

Follow the original gameplan. Taste it after a couple of weeks. If it needs dry hops, add them a few days before bottling/kegging.

ha! I was just going to post the same question.

Last night I was trying to brew this honey amber. Its my 3rd brew, and everything seemed to be going smoothly. But right as I was ready to cool the wort, I realized I forgot the honey! I put the honey in and boiled for another 20 minutes, then went ahead with the rest.

One concern was what the effect of prolonging boiling of the wort would be, which the responses thus far seem to indicate that its not a major problem. There weren't many hops in the wort to begin with, 1.5 for bittering and .5 for finishing, so I wouldn't think it would alter the flavor greatly.

The other concern was that the recipe says to boil the honey for 60 minutes, and I only boiled it for about 20, since I was concerned about the effects of prolonged boiling, I didn't want to boil for another hour. What effect will this have on my beer?

Don't worry about the honey. It has natural antiseptics. I usually add honey at flame out to retain as many of the volatile aromatics I can.
Looking at the recipe you're following I see a possible issue. Bottling with honey can be tricky because the sugar content of honey can vary. I'd play it safe and use 3/4 cup of corn sugar for a five gallon batch.

So I can get input on how much I might have messed up my recipe, I am posting it below:

John Maier's Rogue I2PA

Malt Extracts / Additions: Boil for 60 minutes:
12 lbs Ultralight

Hops:
1 oz Galena (Bittering Hops boiled for 60 minutes)
1.5 oz Cascade (Flavoring Hops boiled the last 30 minutes)
1 oz Sterling (Aroma Hops are boiled the last 15 minutes)
1 oz Sterling (Dry hops added to the secondary fermentation for 10-14 days)

Wort Clarifying Treatment:
Clarifier - Whirlfloc (1/2 - 1 Tablet) - Add last 5 minutes of the boil

The AAUs for the hops according to the bags go like this:

1 oz Galena (11.8% AAU) Bittering Hops boiled for 60 min.
1.5 oz Cascade (7.5% AAU) Flavoring Hops boiled the last 30 min.
1 oz Sterling (6.0% AAU) Aroma Hops boiled the last 15 min.
1 oz Sterling (6.0% AAU) Dry Hops

First, apologies for answering the hijacker. IMHO, you're fine. The dry hopping will help with any loss of volatile hop compounds that the extra boil time caused. I'm willing to wager that you will be pleased with this when it's done.

Or, it's completely ruined to the point that it is hazardous. To dispose of this properly please follow the directions below.
1. Leave in fermenter for 2 weeks.
2. Bottle with 3/4 cup of corn sugar to neutralize any remaining toxins.
3. Send to me for proper disposal.

Thanks Beerkrump. In your opinion, would adding another .5 oz of dry hops replace more of the volatile hop compounds without overloading it? Dryhopping has less of an effect on the aroma and flavor than the aroma hops in the boil, right?

Regardless, I'm feeling better about it now. I'm still new at this. I've done two batches so far. The first was a Coopers IPA kit and it was terrible (it's gotten better over time but it's still bad). The second was a porter which turned out fantastic. Thanks to all for the wonderful advice whenever I've needed it.

Asking me about dry hopping is like asking Homer Simpson about donuts... I've got five gallons of IPA fermenting now that has 5 oz of hops in it and is going to get another oz more dry hopped when I rack it to the secondary this evening. Mmmmmmm, hops....excuse me for drooling on my keyboard.

Dry hopping will definitely add to the aroma and a must for an IPA. Whether you use Sterling (herbal and floral) or Cascades (citrus and floral), the heady aroma when you open the bottle will be awesome. Go for it!

beerkrump,

I brewed my first brew the other day. Tell me if I have this right. 2 weeks in the primary fermenter. Rack to the secondary fermenter and add dry hops. Leave for another week before bottling.

Beerkrump,

You're obviously a big hophead, as am I. There is so much discussing of whether or not racking to secondary is necessary. What do YOU recommend for a hoppy IPA? You obviously know about the hops. I dry hopped my porter in the primary and it seems to be fine. Will racking to secondary make it clearer or cleaner? I'm thinking of doing 2 oz of cascade hops for the dryhopping if you think that's not too much. What would an IPA taste like if it were TOO dryhopped?

That sounds good to me, eaglewwit. Just look around the forum for hints on dry hopping. There are lots of ways to do it and the guys on this site know what there doing and have tried just about every technique. Remember, it's good to learn from your mistakes, it's just a lot less painful to learn from someone else's.

I've hopped in primary and secondary and both turned out great. I usually dry hop in my secondary to free my primary up for my next brew.

Too much dry hopping can give the beer a grassy flavor from chlorophyll leaching from all the vegetable matter. This will happen if you dry hop for an extended period(7 days +).

Now for adding too many hops... Well, I'm going to try and find out this fall. I've got two Cascade, two Centennial, and 2 Zeus hops vines/bines started in my garden and plan to make one HELLACIOUS HOPPY IPA after harvest.

That sounds awesome! So what you're saying is that I can dry hop with as much hops as I want as long as I don't do it for more than 7 days?

Yea, as I always try to mention look through the techniques section of this forum and you'll get more than you want on dry hopping. Also, look through the on line version of John Palmer's 'How to Brew'. Awesome book.

Apologies to hoken, I didn't mean to hijack...I just literally looked through the forum for an answer, didn't see one, signed up to ask it, and by then you did! I didn't want to start a new thread for what I thought was a very similar question.

The responses to both have been very helpful, and comforting....the next month of waiting to see if i screwed it up won't be as full of worry (at least for these reasons), Thanks!

Last night i made my oktoberfest. i steeped the grains and waited for the wort to boil. it took at least 90 minutes to boil. Did i ruin the wort?