About to brew my first Extract batch and have a few questions

invaderzimirl

OK i have everything i need to do my first extract batch. but im wondering as i have read from guides that if doing a partial boil i Should add the malt extract at a later stage of the boil.

Beoir Extract Brewing: An Illustrated Guide wrote:

A partial boil can be very concentrated with large amounts of malt extract in a relatively low amount of liquid, so it's kind of saturated, thereby affecting hop utilization

This has me thinking could i boil 3 liters of water for example and dissolve the malt extract in that in my sterilized fermentation bucket.This is just the sugar/body of the beer not critical to the worth boil flavor or am i wrong?

And just boil my grain extract in the Pot (steep and sparage) and add hops at the various times. maybe boil 10 liters of liquid (i have a 20 Liter pot), which will make cooling easier as i do not have a chiller and rack it into the malt extract water mix, then top it up with water to the 23 Liter batch as per recipe

kind of how Kit brewing is done except adding 3Kg into malt extract into the bucket.

Am i way off in what I'm thinking or would this work? I'm just trying to make sure i get the best flavor i can from my first venture in extract brewing with the equipment i have.

thank you for any input

BeerNut

As I understand it, to get good hop utilisation you need a decent amount of malt boiled with the hops. I suspect that just the grain steepings wouldn't be enough.

On the other hand, the method you're suggesting will still produce beer. If that's what you want to do, do it.

Seaneh

BeerNut wrote: »

As I understand it, to get good hop utilisation you need a decent amount of malt boiled with the hops. I suspect that just the grain steepings wouldn't be enough.

On the other hand, the method you're suggesting will still produce beer. If that's what you want to do, do it.

You need *some* malt to get proper hop utilisation, I can't remember the science of why but I do remember someone explaining to to me once.

What I've done before, during a particularly anally retentive phase, was to have two big pots.

One with about 4/5ths of my lme/dme and another with 1/5th and I'd add my hops to the one with less extract, it's enough malt to properly utilise the hops and not soo much that the liquid is too saturated to use them properly.


But this, admittedly, over the top and probably not worth doing.