Pot for extract brewing

[mChavez]

Hi again!

I am hoping to use LME + specialty grains & hops for my next batch (I've only brewed kits so far) and I can't find enough info about the right size of the pot for boiling LME and ingredients.

Does it have to be 5gallons for 5 gallon batches or can I brew everything in, say, 1 gallon pot and then add cold water to bring the wort to perfect temp?

Thanks again for all your help!

 

[sok454]

1 Gallon will be too small. I have a 24 qt (6 gal) and only do partials (3 gallons) in it and then add the extra 2 gallons after the boil.

I do have a 32 qt. that I could probably do full boils in if i wanted.

 

[kh54s10]

Did your kits make 5 gallon batches. If so you can design an extract recipe in the same way.

I think that you would need a 20 qt. stock pot or something similar for anything bigger that about a 3 gallon batch.

I did 5 gallon extract kits from Northern Brewer and used my 20 qt. aluminum stock pot (~$20 at the grocery store) that I already owned. It is about 3 gallons boiled down to about 2.5 and topped up. I then made several recipes before going to full boil in a 30 turkey fryer pot and now to a SS 10 gallon pot.

 

[Mozart]

Hi again!

I am hoping to use LME + specialty grains & hops for my next batch (I've only brewed kits so far) and I can't find enough info about the right size of the pot for boiling LME and ingredients.

Does it have to be 5gallons for 5 gallon batches or can I brew everything in, say, 1 gallon pot and then add cold water to bring the wort to perfect temp?

Thanks again for all your help!

One gallon would, in my view, be a little small.

Going with a full 5 gallon boil requires more heat than many/most kitchen burners can really produce.

Personally, I use a 20 quart stock pot and top up from there.

Cheers!

 

[mChavez]

yep. my main concern is that the cooker might not be able to bring the pot to boiling temp (or that the pot will cost a fortune as I happen to have an induction cooker )

So from your answers I recon I can get a 4 us gallon pot and just brew 3 gallons of "concentrate" to add 2 gallons of cold water to it?

Thanks!

 

[jtratcliff]

I'm able to bring about 8 gallons up to a gentle rolling boil on my gas stove top. Takes about 45 min to an hour to get there, but it'll boil eventually.

My 1st 5G extract batch was in a 4gal pot w/ top-up. No worries there.

I don't know what you need to do to account for reduced hop utilization though. I went straight to full boil AG BIAB in a 10G aluminum pot ($19.99 on sale at Smart & Final) after that first 5G batch

 

[woozy]

Does it have to be 5gallons for 5 gallon batches or can I brew everything in, say, 1 gallon pot and then add cold water to bring the wort to perfect temp?

The answer to your question is yes. It's very very common to boil a portion of the batch and top off with water. In fact it's frequently assumed.

However 1 gallon is really pushing it and most folks would do 2 1/2 to 3 gallons. If you have a large pasta pot that'd be *perfect*. If you don't have one, get one. You can use it for pasta and soup as well as beer so it's hardly an extravagance no matter how you look at it.

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

You absolutely can do partial boils, even small ones. I do 1.5 gallon partial boils in a 2 gallon pot. I do steeping grains in a bag, then boil for my hops, then I add all extracts at flameout while the wort is still hot, chill, and then dump the wort into chilled make-up water in the fermenter for 5 gallons.

You'll have to use an online calculator to tweak recipes (particularly the hop additions) for partial boils as most recipes assume you're doing full boils, but it really isn't hard to do.

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

As an example, this is how I do the BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde Extract recipe:

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
5.00 lb Extra Light Dry Extract (3.0 SRM) Dry Extract 83.3 %
1.00 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 16.7 %
0.25 oz Centennial [9.50%] (45 min) Hops 7.8 IBU
0.25 oz Centennial [9.50%] (20 min) Hops 5.1 IBU
0.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (10 min) Hops 2.5 IBU
0.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (5 min) Hops 1.4 IBU
1 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-) Yeast-Ale

1. Fill 2-gallon pot with 1.5 gallons of water.
2. Heat water to about 160F. Shut off burner.
3. Add Cara-Pils to bag and steep for 30 minutes (water will cool to about 150F)
4. Remove and drain grain bag.
5. Bring wort to boil.
6. Boil for 1 hr, adding hops per the indicated schedule. (The boil is a bit thinner than in the original recipe which affects the hop utilization, but it isn't far off. Some of the water boils off as well, making the average gravity higher. I tweaked with a brew calculator for the AA% of my hops).
7. At end of boil, shut off heat and add all 5 lbs of extract (Add DME slowly and stir it in as it gets sticky and clumps like crazy in humid air. LME is probably easier to work with, but you'll need about 6 lbs of that vs. 5 lbs of DME).
8. As soon as all the DME is in and dissolved, put covered pot in an ice bath in your sink.
9. Put 4 gallons of chilled water in your fermenter. I buy bottled gallons of water for convenience but pre-boiled and chilled tap water is fine too.
10. Once pot cools to about 100F, dump it into chilled water in fermenter. Final mixture should be about 65-70F.
11. Pitch yeast, install lid and airlock.
12. Wait 3 weeks (2 weeks is probably sufficient, but 3 weeks works well for me)
13. Rack, add priming sugar, and bottle.
14. Wait 3 weeks.
15. Drink!
16. Go to Step 1 and repeat.

Original recipe yield is supposed to be 5.5 gallons - I lose a tiny bit to the grains and the boil (done in a covered pot) so my yield is something like 5.35 gallons. I suppose I could add another 0.15 gallons or 20 oz of water to the pot before I steep if I really wanted to nail the gravity, but my error makes the beer a tad stronger, not such a bad thing. I don't worry about it.

 

[TylerGuy]

HAHA just realized your thread says pot for extract brewing...........if you do that it will get expensive and you will need a different group of people to appreciate it lmao.

 

[unionrdr]

I use the same 5 gallon (20qt) SS stock pot I started with. I do everything from AE to PB/PM BIAB in it. I can boil 3.5 gallons in it max. But 2.5 gallons will work if that's as much as you can boil on your stove. I got aftermarket burner replacements off amazon that heat 3.5G from mash temp to boiling in about 18 minutes on my electric stove.

 

[drew1d]

A good large brew kettle was my best investment.

But that being said, my friend bought a cheap 5 gallon pot at Oddlot. Like $17 (it's like a variety store that sells other stores over stock) The thin metal transfers more heat to the liquid and it always boils quick. It also has the space so it doesn't boil over. My only fear are the handles breaking one day. So we tend to add ice to the boiled wort and transfer it to the carboy with an auto siphon. We just have to remember to really shake the carboy to mix the air in.

I'm not sure on how little water you can put in without scorching the malt.


Good Luck on what you find out.

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

I'm not sure on how little water you can put in without scorching the malt.

If you take the pot off the flame and add the extract slowly you can stir in just about as much extract as you like. I get 5 lbs of DME into ~1.3 gallons of water and could probably do much more if I wanted to.

The trick is that you have to do the extracts as late additions at flameout. Trying to boil this would be making malt candy. Not boiling keeps it from carmelizing and so keeps your color lighter, and the wort is still hot enough to sanitize the mixture. That's all you're really trying to do, sanitize the extract and make sure the wort is liquid enough to stir into your make-up water.

 

[drainbamage]

I do 2 gallon extract+steeped grain boils in a stainless steel pot I inherited from my in-laws. I think it's 4 gallons.

 

[mChavez]

Thank you very much for the advice!

Where can I find a calculator that helps to adjust the amount of hops and speciality malts for smaller, more concentrated boils (i.e 5 gallons of wort but only , say, 2 gallon boil?)

 

[ncbrewer]

Thank you very much for the advice!

Where can I find a calculator that helps to adjust the amount of hops and speciality malts for smaller, more concentrated boils (i.e 5 gallons of wort but only , say, 2 gallon boil?)

The Tinseth formula is often used:
utilization% = 100*((1 - exp(-0.04*minutes))/4.15)*(1.65*0.000125^(SG-1))

This works well if you are using a spreadsheet.

But there has beed some disagreement in recent years about whether boil gravity actually affects hop utilization. Sorry to confuse the issue, but the jury seems to be out on this one.