First full boil

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Festivus

Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2008
Messages
24
Reaction score
0
I am going to try my first full boil in a couple days for a 5 gallon batch, and want to make sure I have everything down right. I am planning on using AHS extract honey wheat ale recipe. Any help will be much appreciated.

The Recipe I am using has steeping grains. How much water do I want to steep them in and how much do I want to sparge with? Should the sparge water be the same temp as the steeping water?

Also, I want to only use around 80% of the hops recommended for the recipe that is using a partial boil? Is this for both bittering and finishing hops?

Do I need to increase the amount of LME or DME (recipe only has LME) since it is a full boil or is what comes with the recipe enough?

Is there any reason to do a late addition with a lot of the extract to keep the color light, or do I just want to boil all the extract the entire time?

Anything else different that I am not thinking of?

Thanks!
 
I did my first full boil with steeping grains about a week ago. I used the full 5 gallons for steeping at about 150, and sparged with another gallon at 160. (The extra gallon boiled off by the end of the boil)

I'm not sure about the hops.. I used 1 oz Mt. Hood for bittering, and 1 oz Cascade for Aroma.

The LME that comes with the recipe is enough, basically your not making more beer than when doing a partial boil, your just boiling more water.

The only reason to do a late extract edition is to keep the color lighter, which I did and it looks nice.

Just be careful! 5 gallons is a lot heavier than 2.
 
This is what I would do:

I boil outside on a turkey burner, and make a half-a$$ed mini-mash on the kitchen stove in the house with about a quart of water per lb. of grain. That said, I would not hesitate to steep all of the grain in a muslin bag in the full volume. Just keep the temp around 150 as best you can, and not hotter than ~180.

I'd use all of the hops. Even if you don't boil some over, what are you going to do with .2oz. of 3-5AA hops. You won't even notice the difference in the finished product.

Don't know how the extract is packaged, as I've never used that kit, but with a wheat you want it light. Use about 1/3 at the beginning of the boil, and the rest with about 15 minutes left. BTW, use only the amount that is included in the kit.

Once in the fermenter keep this baby below 70 degrees. You'll be suprised how quickly the temperature can rise once the little people in the bucket go to work.
 
You do not want to steep in 5 gal... it's so many gal. per pound...someone help me out i forgot the ratio...Iam doing a full boil thursday too with a AHS kit
 
You do not want to steep in 5 gal... it's so many gal. per pound...someone help me out i forgot the ratio...Iam doing a full boil thursday too with a AHS kit
the ratio is 1-2 quarts of water per pound of grain

*edit*
steeping in too much water can cause your beer to become astringent
source
 
Alot of threads I have read say that since it is a full boil, it wont make a difference if you do late addition or not on the LME. Does anyone have experience with this first hand? I am going to try to keep the color as light as possible.

For the hops, since it is a full boil, there should be better hops utilization. That is why I was thinking the 80% of the total, as was suggested in some threads. Does this change on a late addition? Should it be something like 80% hops with all the LME added at the beginning and 100% of the hops if adding 4 or 5 lbs with 15 mins left?
 
Back
Top