To boil or not to boil?

[thesalmon]

I have made a couple of brews recently using a coopers wheat beer kit. the way i have done it is to pour the coopers tin into my fermentor and then to add my hot malt/sugar mixture.
my question is about boiling the malt be it lme or dme. the way i have done it so far is to boil a pot with about half a gallon of water, take it off the heat and then add my malt and mix well away from heat. am i doing this wrong? should i boil my malt for a while before i add in with the rest of the stuff to make the wort. the results i have had so far have been ok but i just keep seeing refrences to boil time in extract brewing and need a bit more clarity.

 

[CervezaMaLa]

Yes...definitely boil...depending on the recipe, anywhere from 15-60 minutes.

Others will give you all the reasons, but I highly recommend to check out How to Brew by John Palmer. Either purchase the book, or read it free online (http://www.howtobrew.com/). Just the first few pages are enough to get you going, and then more detail follows.

 

[flars]

If the can of LME is prehopped do not boil. Boiling a prehopped LME will give you extreme bitterness.

More about this can be found here;
http://byo.com/component/k2/item/556-dont-boil-it
http://www.muntonshomebrew.com/topics/boiling/

Coopers has been promising a better site for quite a while.
https://www.facebook.com/CoopersDIYBeer

American LMEs' are generally not hopped. They are typically boiled for 60 minutes. Boiling the LME darkens the extract. It is not scorched, just darkened by being heated. Late extract addition is a method to lessen the darkening. About 1 pound of extract per gallon of water is added at the biginning of the boil. The remainder 15 minutes before the end of boil time.

The typical boil time of 60 minutes is for hop oil extraction. Heating some of the extract at the beginning of the boil aids in hop utilization.

I hope this helps.

 

[thesalmon]

thanks for all the links and advice...

more research needed

 

[boydster]

I have made a couple of brews recently using a coopers wheat beer kit. the way i have done it is to pour the coopers tin into my fermentor and then to add my hot malt/sugar mixture.
my question is about boiling the malt be it lme or dme. the way i have done it so far is to boil a pot with about half a gallon of water, take it off the heat and then add my malt and mix well away from heat. am i doing this wrong? should i boil my malt for a while before i add in with the rest of the stuff to make the wort. the results i have had so far have been ok but i just keep seeing refrences to boil time in extract brewing and need a bit more clarity.

What you are doing is fine. The extract should be pretty free from contamination if you are adding it right after opening the can or bag it came in. Plus, if you are adding the extract to water that is near-boiling, it will be pasteurized practically immediately when you start stirring it in.

With extract brewing, the boil time is for the hops. If you aren't adding hops, you can get away with not boiling.

 

[Yooper]

It sounds like you're doing the "kit and a kilo" no-boil prehopped kits, where you just mix stuff together. That's fine, if you like the results.

The extract brewing that talks about boiling involves crushed grain, hops, and extract, so it does need a boil and is not a no-boil kit. That could be where the confusion comes from.

There are several types of "beer kits", from no-boil kits (like Cooper's) to kits with grain and hops.

 

[CervezaMaLa]

It sounds like you're doing the "kit and a kilo" no-boil prehopped kits, where you just mix stuff together. That's fine, if you like the results. The extract brewing that talks about boiling involves crushed grain, hops, and extract, so it does need a boil and is not a no-boil kit. That could be where the confusion comes from. There are several types of "beer kits", from no-boil kits (like Cooper's) to kits with grain and hops.

Thanks for the education Yooper (hopefully this thanks counts for the hundreds of your posts that I've already read). Guess I was lucky enough to never be exposed to these kits.

Regardless - still highly recommend How to Brew. I'm so happy I wasted lots of my boss's time by reading it before starting.

 

[thesalmon]

thanks a lot... its all so clear to me now