English Brown Ale kit - advice

[Mothman]

I'm looking at doing this kit for my first brew: https://www.ontariobeerkegs.com/v/vspfiles/assets/images/3gal - english brown ale.pdf

It's a 3 gallon extract + specialty grain kit.

Wondering if the experienced brewers here could give me advice specific to this kit and the instructions, and whether I should just follow the recipe as given, or if I should (and if so, how) tweak some steps.

Specifically:

1 - the instructions are indicating a 30 minute boil, instead of the standard hour. Should I do 30 minutes? Or should I start with, say, 4.25 gallons of water (instead of 3.75) and boil for a full hour?

2 - if the consensus is to boil for an hour, do I stick with the included hop schedule? First hop addition at 30 minutes? Or would I put the bittering hops in at the start of the boil and let it boil for the full hour?

3 - I have read a lot about doing late additions of extracts to improve the beer color (less darkening). If I want to do that with this specific recipe, what should I add, when? Half of the total at the start? Maybe the 1 lb of dry, and 1 lb of liquid? And the remaining 2 lbs of liquid with 10 or 15 minutes left in the boil?

Thanks all.

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

If its your very first brew, I would personally highly recommend just following the directions carefully and get a feel of what brewing is about before thinking about making any changes to a recipe.

Also, not to be rude but I doubt you know your boil off rate if you havn't used your equipment before to make this type of adjustment.

 

[Mothman]

Also, not to be rude but I doubt you know your boil off rate if you havn't used your equipment before to make this type of adjustment.

Understood. I was just ball-parking it, based on the recipes instructions.

The included recipe is suggesting a 1/2 gallon boil off over half and hour, so I doubled that in asking my question.

And I'm game to just follow the recipe, but if there are any easy-to-do tweaks, that are a no-brainer, where it really makes no sense to NOT do it, then I might as well start doing it "the right way". Hence my questions.

I'd never seen instructions for a 30 minute boil, wasn't sure if there's really a good reason to cut the boil short, or if it's just instructed that way for simplicity sake (eg. assuming people doing a 3 gal batch only have a small pot that can't hold enough to allow a full hour boil).

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

Understood. I was just ball-parking what the amount might be, based on the recipes suggested pre-boil volume.

The included recipe is suggesting a 1/2 gallon boil off over half and hour, so I doubled that in asking my question.

And I'm game to just follow the recipe, but if there are any easy-to-do tweaks, that are a no-brainer, where it really makes no sense to NOT do it, then I might as well start doing it "the right way". Hence my questions.

Yeah, I get it man at the end of the day its all about having fun and something good to drink.

How do you plan on chilling and fermenting? Those are good questions to start with as well. You want to make sure your not stressing out your yeast with temps that are too high or low this makes a huge difference in your final product.

My first few times of chilling, I was using an ice bath and just stirring the wort every so often being careful not to contaminate anything.

Pre-boil for the most part you can be a little more relaxed but once you boil and have wort you need to be extra careful about things.

 

[kh54s10]

Since this is an extract kit, boil off really doesn't come into play. You will boil off some but you will top up later to the proper volume.

The kit calls for 30 minute boil. Do that. The hop amounts are calculated for that long.

If you want to you could add half the extract at the beginning and the rest at the end. This will mostly have the affect of keeping the color lighter.

Make sure you have the pot off the heat when adding the extract, especially the liquid extract so it doesn't fall to the bottom and scorch.

Control the temperature of the fermentation. It will create heat. Keep the temperature of the wort in the mid sixties. You can do this with a "swamp cooler" Put the fermenter in a bucket with 6-10 inches of water, add ice as necessary to keep the temperature as stable as possible and in the mid sixties.

 

[Mothman]

In this case, there is no top-up planned in the fermenter.

My aim is to do full-volume boils where possible, even for extract kits, everything I've read tells me more volume in the boil = better.

And this specific kit calls for a full-volume boil, starting with 3.75 gal, ending with 3.25 gal (hopefully lol), no top up (it's a 3 gallon kit).

This has made me wonder though, why is topping up acceptable for extract brewing, but not for all-grain? Assuming it's more to do with all-grain wanting to use all of your water volume for proper mashing and sparging, but I'm guessing... that's a different discussion though.

You both talked about chilling and fermenting temp. control, and yes, I think I'm set there.

I will be cooling in an ice bath. I tested by cooling about 5 gallons of water fresh off the boil, and got it down to about 80F in 20 minutes, and that was without using any ice, just cold tap water (water is damn cold right now), drained and replaced several times, a few stirs, so I'm confident that I'll be able to bring 3 gallons of boiled wort down to 70F or lower pretty quickly, using ice water.

I'll be doing my first brew with a buddy who has an immersion chiller as well, so that will be helpful too.

For controlling fermentation temperature, I'll be using a Cool Brewing fermentation bag with ice bottles. My goal is to try to keep the wort near the lower end of the yeast temperature range for several days at least.

I'm unsure at this point whether I should then let the temp. rise up to around room temperature for the remaining few weeks of fermentation, or if I should aim to keep it at the lower temp. through the whole time.

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

For controlling fermentation temperature, I'll be using a Cool Brewing fermentation bag with ice bottles. My goal is to try to keep the wort near the lower end of the yeast temperature range for several days at least.

I'm unsure at this point whether I should then let the temp. rise up to around room temperature for the remaining few weeks of fermentation, or if I should aim to keep it at the lower temp. through the whole time.

Again, just my opinion here I would just try and keep it in the temp range suggested for that yeast as much as possible. I wouldn't worry about changing it from cold, to room temp, to...whatever...Just keep it in that range for the whole time. The only brewing that really needs to change fermentation temps is doing a D-rest for lagers, but thats not the case here.

 

[bkboiler]

yep, you'll want to add some of the extract so that the hops can be utilized, as boiling in just water doesnt extract the bitterness as effectively.
but the reason for the shorter boil is as you said, with a partial boil, you risk darkening the color a lot, so some people even add some extract at the beginning and some near the end. best to research that for another brew, but would follow directions on this one.
and make sure to give the chill PLENTY of time to cool down before pitching the yeast. The entire wort should be in the 60F range. not just the top surface (3-5gal of beer can have quite a variation if you havent stirred recently.)