Water amout for boil

[Brewno]

Papazian says 1.5 gal of water in the brew pot and Palmer says three. My LHBS recipes all use 1.5. Does it make much difference? I'm brewing tomorrow and remembering my last brew at 1.5 evaporated down to almost syrup like. I was thinking of going 2 gallons or 2.5? Does it matter much?

 

[wild]

I go to 2½ gallons just for that reason.

Wild

 

[pahiker6]

I'd boil 3 gallons if you can, and try doing a late extract addition too.

 

[malkore]

honestly if you can, a full boil, 5 gallons plus whatever will evaporate during your boil time.

Full boil is > than partial boil. but if you must partial, boil as much as you can.
for that very reason, before I got setup for All grain and the equipment to do large boils, I did two 12qt pots, splitting ingredients equally between the two. then I only needed 1 gallon top off water in the fermenter.

better hop utilization
lower chance for boilover or carmelizing due to the wort being less thick

and 12qt pots are cheap, lightweight, and easy to pour (my big pots have valves installed...I'm not about to pour 5-6 gallons of hot water!)

 

[Funkenjaeger]

Right, you should ideally boil as much as you can. However, be aware that hop utilization changes dramatically depending on the boil volume so if you are boiling more or less than the specific recipe you are brewing calls for, you need to adjust the amount of hops. The same goes for doing late extract additions. Brewing software is very useful for that. I learned my lesson with that a while back, when I took a recipe designed for about a 2 gallon boil and did a 3.5 gallon boil with late extract addition, without reducing the amount of hops, and it came out WAY too bitter.

If you aren't comfortable tweaking recipes yet, you are probably best off using the boil volumes and additions that each recipe calls for.

 

[TheJadedDog]

If you are using a recipe, remember that all the hop additions are calculated for the specified amount of water. If you increase your boil volume, you'll need to make adjustments to your hop additions or your IBUs will be too high.

 

[Brewno]

If you are using a recipe, remember that all the hop additions are calculated for the specified amount of water. If you increase your boil volume, you'll need to make adjustments to your hop additions or your IBUs will be too high.

I am using a recipe but the last time I did one of their recipe's I didn't get any hop flavor and for an IPA it lacked bitterness (I like bitter).
I asked the LHBS I got the kit from today and they said they make the water amount low due to allot of first time brewers using pots they may already have at home which are small, he said I could use what I wanted as far as water.
But here's the thing, for more hop utilization I wanted to to an extract late. I also want to dry hop. But now you have me wondering about my bittering hops and the addition of more water plus the extract late. I was only going to up the water to 2 gallons "maybe' 2.5. With the minimal amount of hop bitterness I got in my last "hop devil" clone using a concentrated boil I didn't fear using extract late.

Here is the recipe for tomorrow:

6.6 lb Munton's Extra light Malt extract
3/4 lb Munton & Fison Crystal Malt 60 L
1/2 lb Munton & Fison Caprils Malt 20 L
2 oz. Kent Goldings hop plugs (bittering)
1 oz. Kent Goldings plugs (flavoring)
1 1/2 oz. Fuggles plugs (finishing)
Wyeast #1275 XL Thames Valley Ale