There's truth and not so much in your statements,
manortc.
1. Palmer is talking about a concentrated boil. Generally speaking, the lower the gravity of the kettle wort, the better the isomerization of hops resins/oils (though that is subject to a lower limit in terms of OG). In other words, if you're boiling this recipe's total extract in 6 gallons you'll get different isomerization than all the extract in 3 gallons. The late-addition technique provides a less concentrated boil for brewers who, like me, can't/don't boil a large volume of wort. So if you can only boil a portion of the full batch,
NMOBrewer, reserve a portion of the extract for late addition.
2. The other reason to add extract late is browning reactions which take place under heat. Extracts have already been boiled - more on this in a moment - so even the lightest extracts are already darker than that which can be obtained by mashing pale/pils malt. Reserving the lion's share of your extract for addition at flameout - wait for it!
- will significantly reduce these darkening reactions. This recipe is light enough that I'd want to avoid that assiduously.
3. Extract should not significantly produce hot break. If it does, select another manufacturer. To the best of my knowledge, all commonly-available extracts are boiled until the hot break is observed. It's part of the manufacturing process. If you're seeing break in your kettle as an extract brewer, it's because of your specialty grains. This recipe, because it has no specialty grains, will produce no break - you could boil it for three hours and still get no hot break.
4. In my brewery, flameout addition of extract ensures sanitation without risking scorching the extract at all. The time it takes to re-sanitize what
should be a sanitary product is minimal. By the time your chiller takes the volume of wort to pitching temperature, the wort has been heat sanitized. There's no need to boil the extract. Besides, if you remove the kettle from the heat to dissolve the extract, you interrupt the boil, which screws up your IBU calculation; if you boil 50 minutes and stop the heat, you're not boiling your main addition of hops for 60 minutes. You're boiling for 50 minutes.
You dig?
Cheers,
Bob
