Late extract additions

[Redcrossx76]

Very new to this whole thing. Second batch is in the fermenter now. Been reading a lot on the extract forum about adding extract late in the boil. Can you do this for dry as well as liquid? Does this affect the hot break at all? Pros and Cons of doing this? Thanks.

 

[Yooper]

Yes, you can do that, and it works great. Hot break wasn't an issue for me, or rather the lack of, I guess. Sometimes you don't even get a hot break with extract, but if you add it near the end of the boil you will still get a hot break if one is going to happen.

 

[Pappers_]

Yes, you can do that, and it works great.

+1 late extract additions improved the quality of my extract beers significantly, especially lighter ales.

 

[JBmadtown]

I do partial boil extract brewing and I drank the late addition kool-aid.

For partial boils, the idea is to decrease the sugar concentration to reduce carmelization. Carmelization can change the flavor (not good or bad, but different) and darken the beer. For all grain brewers there are other reasons to boil (like getting rid of DMS) that extract brewer don't need to worry about. The boil time for extract brewing is mainly for hop utilization (more later).

In my experience (6-8 batches to be truthful) I don't find much difference in hot break. However, I do think that I am less likely to get a boil over when I add hops. I haven't done much of my own recipe creation. Yooper and others will attest to the fact that hop utilization may be different using the late addition method. For the kits I have done haven't found it to be an issue.

 

[Coldies]

You could always add half at 60 min and the other at 10 min if your worried about the hop utilization.

 

[jollytim]

It's my understanding that you get better hops utilization with less sugar in the water. I normally use 25 to 33% dry dme for full hops schedule and add the remaining at flame-out.

All I know for sure, is that since I started doing it this way, I've improved my beer tremendously, both in flavor and color.