Is this called partial boil?

[The_Glue]

The maximum amount of water i can boil on my really weak built-in electric cooktop is around 1.5 gallons. (despite the largest heating "circle" is rated for 3600W)

Since i am a beginner i am all right with doing several 1 gallon batches until i learn how to do a good brew without infections, off-flavors etc.

By trial and error i came to the conclusion that i will need about 2 gallons of water (mash + sparge) to be able to put 1 gallon of beer into the fermenter.

What i do is mashing my grains in 1 gallon of water and after mashing i start to boil it. Meanwhile i do the sparging by putting my grain bag into about 1 gallon of sparge water and let it sit there for a few minutes, moving it around and stuff.

During the boil i just constantly (every 10 minutes) adding my preheated (so it won't stop the boil) sparge water to the boil to keep the boiling wort around the 1 gallon mark.

So basically i never boil more than 1 gallon of water for a 1 gallon batch and i seen some info in other threads that this could be not enough water, kinda like a partial boil.

Is this bad practice? Should i use as much water as i can for the boil? (i think i can get up my water amounts to boiling 1.5g and adding 0.5g during the boil)

 

[JuiceyJay]

Possibly.
I think what partial boil is referring to is say, boiling 3.5 gallons of wort and than after it's done add the last 1.5gal to bring the total volume up to 5gal.

 

[The_Glue]

Possibly.
I think what partial boil is referring to is say, boiling 3.5 gallons of wort and than after it's done add the last 1.5gal to bring the total volume up to 5gal.

basically i am doing that but i am adding the wort during the boil not after it so 100% of my wort and mash water gets boiled but the most of my mash water gets boiled only for like 20 minutes.

i've seen posts about hop utilization and taste so i got worried that maybe i should begin the boil with my full 2 gallons of water somehow (which means i gotta get a better stovetop or something)

 

[twistr25]

Are you doing all grain or is there some extract too? If you are doing all grain, your "late addition" is effectively the same as doing a late extract addition, which is fine. The more water does enhance hop utilization, but only doing the one gallon batch I think you have enough.

 

[The_Glue]

Are you doing all grain or is there some extract too? If you are doing all grain, your "late addition" is effectively the same as doing a late extract addition, which is fine. The more water does enhance hop utilization, but only doing the one gallon batch I think you have enough.

I am doing all grain. My main problem is that for the first half of my boil i basically use only half of the available wort amount and maybe that can cause some of the problems i mentioned in my previous post.

 

[twistr25]

That's what I mean though, what problems are you getting? When I first started extract, all I had for the majority of the boil was the runnings from the steeping grains in the kettle, I didn't add the "real" fermentables, i.e. the extract, until flameout. I think for the batch size you are doing you shouldn't really be having any issues.

For the record, I started doing 5 gallon full boils on my apartment's crappy electric stove, sure it took a while to get to boil and was barely a boil, but I don't think you should have that much issue heating two gallons.

 

[chickypad]

If you're not getting DMS from it then I don't think it's an issue. Couldn't you also just do your boil in 2 pots?

 

[unionrdr]

If you're using an electric stove with the old style coiled heating elements,go to my profile. I have a link to some better heating elements on amazon. I can heat 3.5 gallons of mashed wort & sparge from mash temp to boiling in about 18 minutes. I mash 4-6lbs of grains in 2 gallons of local spring water & sparge with 1.5 gallons to get my 3.5 gallon boil volume. I keep 2-3 gallons more spring water in the fridge a day or two before brewday to top off with. Chilling the wort down to 75F or so,then strain into FV. Topping off with the really cold spring water brings the temp down to about 65F,a great ale temp. Also perfect for WL029 Kolsh yeast.