Kit instructions seem different from all advice?

[pyth]

Hi guys, I started brewing a few months ago with extract kits, have a pair of porters under my belt and just racked a pale ale into secondary earlier tonight.

In the intrest of learning more about the hobby, I've been reading a ton of reading on this forum and a few other spots. One thing I noticed is that just about everyone seems to boil the wort for at least an hour, whereas all my kits instructions have been 30 minute boils.

Now, I noted the instructions are a set of generic, non specific instructions my LHBS provides in the box. Should I be following those instructions to the letter? Or would an hour boil benefit me?

To give an idea of the process, for my cascade pale ale I just made--

Steep specialty grains in a cheesecloth bag in 155 degree water for 20 miinutes in about 5L of water.

Bring to a boil, and add half of malt extract (called for all of it, but I had heard you can lighten the color by holding half back til the end, so I did that) and boiling hops.

At 22 minutes added cascade aroma hops.

At 24 minutes I added the remaining malt extract. This also killed my boil for about 2 minutes.

At 29 minutes added finish hops.

31 minutes I pulled it off heat and chilled.

So is this a typical process for extract brewing with the 30 minute boils; Would I benefit from using a 60 minute boil? Should I add that second half of extract a bit sooner or later in the boil?

Any advice or insight would be much appreciated! Thanks.

 

[HopSong]

What kind of kits are you doing that only have short hop boils?

I'd think extract kits that didn't use grains or added hops would be short boils. However, as I'd understand it.. the longer boils are necessary to extract the goodness out of the hops.

Steeping, on the other hand, I understand to be different from a boil.. steeped as mentioned above.

 

[djfriesen]

If the recipe uses hops that only need a 30 min. boil to get the required IBUs out of the bittering hops, than that's fine. I'd want to make sure it was a good rolling boil to get rid of all the DMS, but other than that, if it's how the instructions read, you're probably fine.

That said, a 60 minute boil is fairly standard, so don't expect to see many other recipes call for a half hour boil.

 

[pyth]

Yeah that was what confused me, as both my porters, and my cascade hops pale ale both called for 30 minute boils. And almost 3 times the hops went into the pale ale as the porter. What really concerned me was when I noticed all the instruction sheets seem to be generic and the same for every kit they make.

That said the porter tastes great, cracked it open and enjoyed a few this evening while I made the pale. So not overly concerned about the beer not coming out well, just wondering if it could be even better if I went to the 60 minute. Maybe an experiment for another day.

 

[Jwood]

i'd follow the recipe instructions for the kit. some of the fermentation advice for kits has known to be a bit iffy though.

With extract you don't really need to get rid of DMS, i believe that has already been done through the production of the extract.

 

[djfriesen]

I brew AG, so I was not aware of that. Well then, even less to worry about.

 

[pyth]

Oh I def didn't follow the fermentation instructions. They recomended 3-5 days primary, 7-10 secondary, 2 weeks bottle conditioning and drink.

I tend more towards secondary when it's ready, bottle when it's ready, a month minimum in the bottle. Hell I racked the porter after 2 days in primary, it was just, done, OG 1.050 FG of 1.006 in 2 days. I was pretty happy with that

 

[ACbrewer]

I've heard somewhere - probably on Beer smith - that you can get almost all of the alpha acid in 30 mins. That doesn't mean you get as much as you do with 60 or 90, but more that most of it is gotten in 30 minutes. Never blind tested this myself, so I don't know.

 

[cracked1]

A couple thoughts... Are you using pre-hopped LME? If so, I would think this could be part of what makes these recipes require shorter boils. I've never used it so I'm not 100% on that though. It's just a theory.

As far as the fermentation side of things, I think you will find that racking to secondary in MOST situations isn't really necessary. I keep most of my beers in primary for at least a month and then keg or bottle. The yeast don't just convert the sugars to alcohol and quit. They will happily swim around and continue to clean up after themselves if left alone. This creates a cleaner tasting, better beer, IMHO. Your mileage may vary... Do some searches in the forums and you will find that opinions on most brewing topics vary a lot. So, try out some of the different recommended methods every once in awhile and you will eventually get your own thing going.

Cheers and happy brewing!

 

[pyth]

I don't think it's pre hopped extract, it was hop pellets. I didn't even know there was pre hoped extract to be honest.

I do think I'm gonna try the no secondary on the current batch, I skiped my bucket and just went direct to the carboy. Mostly because I find the carboy more pleasing to look at in the garage then the bucket. I'm gonna leave it there for a month. Hoping I get good clarity out of it, being the first time brewing anything but porter it's the first time I've been concerned about it. I did manage to chill the wort in about 20 mins initially, though I didn't know to try adding irish moss or anything.

Any tips for improving clarity after the fermentation process has begun/finished?

 

[RM-MN]

Hell I racked the porter after 2 days in primary, it was just, done, OG 1.050 FG of 1.006 in 2 days. I was pretty happy with that

No it wasn't done. It was done with the first part of the fermentation, the part where it is producing lots of CO2, but it was far from being done. Yeast does far more than just producing CO2 and alcohol.

 

[RM-MN]

I don't think it's pre hopped extract, it was hop pellets. I didn't even know there was pre hoped extract to be honest.

I do think I'm gonna try the no secondary on the current batch, I skiped my bucket and just went direct to the carboy. Mostly because I find the carboy more pleasing to look at in the garage then the bucket. I'm gonna leave it there for a month. Hoping I get good clarity out of it, being the first time brewing anything but porter it's the first time I've been concerned about it. I did manage to chill the wort in about 20 mins initially, though I didn't know to try adding irish moss or anything.

Any tips for improving clarity after the fermentation process has begun/finished?

You could have had prehopped extract and still have hops added. The point of the 60 minute boil is to extract and isomerize the hop oils to provide bitterness to your beer. A lot of recipes will have you add more hops at 30 minutes for flavor and then some will also have hops added at somewhere between 10 and zero minutes for the aroma. You can even add hops after the ferment is over (called dry hopping) for even more aroma.

Once the ferment it done you could add gelatin to make the beer clearer but time will do the same thing.

 

[pyth]

No it wasn't done. It was done with the first part of the fermentation, the part where it is producing lots of CO2, but it was far from being done. Yeast does far more than just producing CO2 and alcohol.

But if I rack at that time into a secondary, isn't that still giving the yeast a chance to do it's cleanup? I thought that was the point of giving it a few weeks in secondary?

 

[unionrdr]

Commercially,secondaries are known as bright tanks, & are just for clarifying the beer. We mostly use them for oaking,adding fruit,etc. I don't use a secondary unless one of those things is necessary. Leaving it on the yeast in primary is where the beer's by products get eaten by the still hungry yeasties. And some extracts are pre-hopped,but many with bittering only. That's one reason for the 30 minute or less hop additions. Some bittering is had at 30 minutes. But below that,I've found,are flavor & some aroma. You want more aroma,dry hop it. Cooper's & Muntons LME cans can be had pre-hopped. But they do produce plain (un-hopped) LME's as well. And those are just 2 examples.
In the case of pre-hopped extracts,I prefer the ones with some bittering only. I also use half a 3lb bag of plain DME in the boil for hop additions,saving the pre-hopped LME can for flame out. So when I add hops at 20-30 minutes on down,I get a little bittering with the flavor of the hops used.

 

[Pie_Man]

Two days seems like a really short fermentation, although, you like your beer and that's what counts.

I would think the problem with transferring to the secondary after two days is that a lot of the yeast is removed and thus not there to clean up by products in your beer. Idk.

 

[unionrdr]

It is possible with some yeast strains in sufficieant numbers to get done in 2 days & settle just as quickly. Then yes,much od the yeast would be lost. But still enough to carbonate id it doesn't sit too long,imo. As I said,I don't secondary unless something is being added that doesn't play well with the yeast cake. And even then,I wait till a stable FG is had to transfer if I'm oaking or something.

 

[pyth]

Ahhh, okay that makes a lot of sense. I'll keep the current batch in primary for a a few days at stable FG and see if it makes a notable difference for me.

Thanks for the advice all!

 

[unionrdr]

3-5 days after a stable FG works pretty well on average. It def makes a difference in clarity & flavor.

 

[aiptasia]

Giving the beer a nice little rest after primary fermentation will definitely help clean up some potential off flavors (ex: diacetyl). Many of the brewers here are using three weeks to one month in the primary and transferring straight to a bottling bucket for bottling/kegging.

I have a batch of a bastardized Belgian Specialty Ale (but with an English ale yeast strain) in my primary at the moment that's about one week on the yeast. It's still actively fermenting and doing it's thing. I had to bring it indoors from my garage drop freezer as some cold snaps dropped the temps lower than the ale yeast usually likes. I didn't want to cold crash it this early.

Doh!