Question on recipe book by Jamil

I've just got the book "Brewing Classic Styles" by Jamil Zainasheff

All of the recipes are geared to 7 gallons --- now on page 35 he talks about adjusting down to a 5 gallon recipe doing a 3 gallon boil.

The text reads (using 3 gal): Boil all of your hops in half of your total malt extract, in half the recipe volume, add the remaining extract at the end of the boil to pasteurize it, and then dilute to the final recipe volume in the fermenter.

So this is a dumb question --- I guess you cut all the ingredients in half - even the malt extract. Only concern here is if I cut the extract in half and then compare the modified Jamil recipe to the type of recipe I'm looking at in other books (already adjusted for 5 gal) --- the amount of extract seems pretty light.

I'm confused

He's trying to ensure that the hop utilization is correct to maintain the balance of the recipe. If the wort is too rich, you don't get the necessary IBUs from your hops. So he's suggesting you reserve half of your extract until late in the boil, to compensate for the smaller volume.

So scale the ingredients down in a linear manner to match your batch size, and use late extract additions to preserve your hop utilization.

BlindLemonLars said:

He's trying to ensure that the hop utilization is correct to maintain the balance of the recipe. If the wort is too rich, you don't get the necessary IBUs from your hops. So he's suggesting you reserve half of your extract until late in the boil, to compensate for the smaller volume.

So scale the ingredients down in a linear manner to match your batch size, and use late extract additions to preserve your hop utilization.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply - makes sense ----- but I'm still confused about cutting the malt extract in half. So for a Southern British Ale in the book that would drop the malt extract from 5lbs to 2.5lbs --- that just seems light on extract compared to other Southern British Ales calling for 5 - 7lbs of a single extract or a blend of extracts :cross:

I'm at a disadvantage here, as I don't have his book to refer to. But I have to think he's advising you to cut the extract in half AFTER you've scaled the recipe down to your volume. Then add the other half late in the boil. The halving only applies to the timing of your additions, not to the overall amount of extract.

So if you're scaling a 7 gallon recipe that calls for 7 lbs of extract to 5 gallons, use 5 lbs. Add 2.5 lbs at the beginning of your boil, and the other 2.5 towards the end.

BLL has it correct. You don't want to have a concentrated boil with all the extract in there. Use only half the extract during the boil and add the other half at the end right before you kill the heat. You still use all of the extract.

Is a late extract addition appropriate for all styles / recipes? Does JZ offer specifics on the timing of the second addition of extract?

All those recipes are for 5 gallon batches not 7 gallon. It's a 7 gallon boil that results in a 5 gallon batch.

I've done a few in that book after converting to mini mash and ALL are GREAT! The West Coast Blaster is getting a TON of compliments and I have an order for 20 gallons of the American Amber for an Awards Banquet in June.

BTW = as fr as late additions . Doing the math in the book it normally comes out to 1/3 extract in the beginning and 2/3rds late. By doing this the OG for the boil will be ABOUT 1.040 which will geve you the best Hops utilization.

The recipes in the book assume 6gals at the end of the boil, 5.5gal in the fermenter and 5gals to serve. The basic assumption is for a full boil requiring 7 gals at the start of the boil to account for boil off. The 3gal boil adjustments are for the same volume but with a reduced volume in the boil.

If you are doing a partial boil if you add all of the extract at the beginning of the boil then the hops utilization will be severely decreased due to the concentrated wort. By only adding half of extract at the beginning of the boil you keep the wort concentration the as with a full boil, resulting in similar hops extractions. The remaining the extract is added in the last few minutes of the boil to bring the gravity up to the expected OG.

He is just trying to account for the fact that many home brewers do stove top boils and don't have suficient capacity for a full boil. A full boil does make significant improvements when making light colored or hoppy beers.

This is all described in the chapter Brewing these recipes.

Craig

If you want you can always do two half boils on the stove at once. That is what I've been doing until I get the garage set up for 100% full boils.