First Full Boil

[huknbuk]

Hi,
I recently took advantage of the 60qt kettle deal through Cabelas and scored a burner through Craigslist. So far I have only done extract kits from Northern Brewer on my stovetop where I boiled only part of my wort and then added more water later. I follow the directions that come with the kits. Now that I am able to do a full boil, are there any adjustments that I should make as far as the amounts of hops or extract to add?
I was just wondering in general terms, as I currently don't have a kit and will probably continue to do extract brewing for a while, at least until I accumuate the rest the equipment and knowlege needed to go all grain.

 

[phidelt844]

The only difference will be hop utilization. You can use a program like Beersmith to calculate the change, but I believe reducing the bittering hops by around 25% ought to give you a perfectly fine outcome.

 

[kevinkaseykizer]

The only difference will be hop utilization. You can use a program like Beersmith to calculate the change, but I believe reducing the bittering hops by around 25% ought to give you a perfectly fine outcome.

how would one calculate this using beersmith? I just got BeerSmith yesturday and have only spent about 10 minutes looking around it it.

I too have only been doing partial boils and i plan to start doing Full boils since now i have the ability to as well.(extract brews)

 

[secinarot]

how would one calculate this using beersmith?

Just set your boil volume to 5 gallons and make sure the boil time on all of your extracts & grains is set to 60 minutes. Then up the 60 minute boil hops by 25% (don't need to adjust the late boil hops) and see if your IBUs are on target. If not then adjust the hops until IBUs hit the recipe IBU.

 

[malkore]

Also, with the current hop shortages still in play, its somewhat of a safe bet for 'kit beers' to contain lower ALA hops, probably at the low end of the 'acceptable IBU range' per BJCP guidelines.

Meaning if the range is 20-27, you're probably ending up with 21 IBU's on a partial boil, or 24 IBU's on a full boil with better hop utilization.

In other words, you can just remove about 20-25% of the bittering hops...or just leave them in and have a slightly more bitter beer that is still within guidelines.

That'll work unless its a really hoppy beer to start with. then 20% better efficiency might make it too bitter/unbalanced for most people's taste buds.

 

[Dloucks]

huknbuk. I just did my first full boil with a kit from NB. Their kits say to reduce the hops by 25% if using a full boil, however the last two kits I brewed I thought were VERY thin on hop bittering, so I went ahead and left the full hop bill in at 60 minutes.

I racked this beer to secondary on Wednesday and the my hydrometer sample already tasted excellent, very glad I stuck with 100% of the hops even for the full boil.

I'd agree with others that in order to keep costs down the retailers are likely designing kits towards the bottom of the acceptable IBU range especially with the smaller beers were they can get away with a very lightly hopped beer.