Extract brewing

Khannie

Can someone point me to a good introduction to extract brewing? Or give me the five line overview?

I want to brew a nice, hoppy ale. I currently know about the specifics of brewing beer or ale other than if I want to go beyond kits, extract is probably the next step.

drumswan

http://www.beoir.org/index.php/brewing-knowledge/extract-brewing-mainmenu-47

Good articles there. Extract is not more difficult, just has different steps than a kit.

BeerNut

The Homebrew Company sells extract kits, and the Discover America one tasted great when adamski8 did it. It's a good way of learning the process without having to worry about recipe formulation.

For recipe formulation it's best to get some brewing software. I use BeerTools Pro.

Khannie

OK, slight noob question here - Do I need to buy a boiler? I mean could I use, say, 10L pot, do it up in that, then water it down in the fermentation vessel? (edit: I see this is possible from the beoir guide

"If you don't have a pot or boiler big enough to boil the whole volume you want, then you can do a partial boil, but you'll need to top up with cool water. I use an 18 litre water cooler bottle for fermenting, and can boil 11 litres in a large stock pot, so I need at least 7 litres of water for topping up. "

I seem to remember someone mentioning a large boiling pot that they bought in Dublin city for reasonable money before. Does anyone know where I can get one? I would prefer one that I can stick on the gas hob if possible.

Also, is this a very smelly process? I would expect kickback if it is. (I note that the guy in the beoir guide is doing it outdoors)

drumswan

Theres no more odour than any other type of cooking. Switch on your extractor fan to deal with the steam.

Heatons usually have big pots, the bigger the boil the better for hop utilisation etc.

macnug

Khannie wrote: »

OK, slight noob question here - Do I need to buy a boiler? I mean could I use, say, 10L pot, do it up in that, then water it down in the fermentation vessel? (edit: I see this is possible from the beoir guide

I seem to remember someone mentioning a large boiling pot that they bought in Dublin city for reasonable money before. Does anyone know where I can get one? I would prefer one that I can stick on the gas hob if possible.

Also, is this a very smelly process? I would expect kickback if it is. (I note that the guy in the beoir guide is doing it outdoors)

I'd say if you have the money get a boiler. I used to do the partial boil but I found that towards the end of the boil the malt used to caramelise, which will make the beer darker and make the malt harder to ferment. And there's the hop utilization too. There are a few ways around this but if you have the money save yourself the hassle and buy a boiler.

Khannie

drumswan wrote: »

Theres no more odour than any other type of cooking. Switch on your extractor fan to deal with the steam.

Heatons usually have big pots, the bigger the boil the better for hop utilisation etc.

Thanks.

This one is 20 euro on the heatons site and looks like it will hold about 15-16L while boiling (if my maths is right - total volume is 17L, but it doesn't say if that's inside or outside so I'd guess outside).

drumswan

macnug wrote: »

I'd say if you have the money get a boiler. I used to do the partial boil but I found that towards the end of the boil the malt used to caramelise, which will make the beer darker and make the malt harder to ferment. And there's the hop utilization too. There are a few ways around this but if you have the money save yourself the hassle and buy a boiler.

I use one of these. I saw an offer for a boiler & wort chiller for <100 somewhere recently.

https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/33lt-boiler-pack-includes-hop-strainer-p-576.html

I steep the grains in a pot in about 3-5L of water, then chuck it in the boiler.

Khannie

macnug wrote: »

I'd say if you have the money get a boiler. I used to do the partial boil but I found that towards the end of the boil the malt used to caramelise, which will make the beer darker and make the malt harder to ferment. And there's the hop utilization too. There are a few ways around this but if you have the money save yourself the hassle and buy a boiler.

Hmmmmm.

I don't want to splash the 75 euro on a boiler just yet. That 20 euro stock pot looks decent enough and if I move on to a boiler it would still get use for stew and so on.

What was the size of the partial v's full brew that you were doing?

drumswan

Ive done partial boils in an 11L pot, topping them up to 19 or 20 litres. The beer came out much darker than target SRM.

Small batch brewing is another option, Ive had great results with this. 10 boil using 2x5L demijohns as fermentation vessels.

BeerNut

Khannie wrote: »

I seem to remember someone mentioning a large boiling pot that they bought in Dublin city for reasonable money before.

Living Island on Talbot Street does a 19L pot for €18.

Even if you do eventually buy a boiler (I decided after six brews, several awkward chilling sessions and one nasty high-gravity boilover that I needed one) you'll still need a stockpot for steeping grains.

You will get a lot of steam if you brew indoors, but it's easy enough to test if your extractor is up to it by boiling the pot full of water for an hour and see what happens. It could be worth knowing what to expect before you're in the middle of a brewday and can't see your hand in front of your face.

Hingo

I got the 21 L pot from HBC - use about 13-15 ltrs to boil (leaving room for boil-overs) and top up with cold water (using ice baths in the sink to chill and getting the rest of the temp sown with about 10 L water from the fridge. ) It grand but for me I'm kinda thinking I should've just went and got a decent boiler. Looking to start maybe doin brew-in-a-bag towards the end of the year and a decent boiler with temp control will be a good investment for Extract and BIAB (otherwise I'm on an electric hob in the kitchen :pac: )

If you have any similar ambitions, I'd say you might be better off looking at a good boiler/Wort Chiller as a long term investment.

If you happy to stay on Extract brewing for the foreseeable future then the smaller pots should be grand, no need for a wort chiller and most recipes I've done say 13L Boil is acceptable for good hop utilisation

macnug

Khannie wrote: »

Hmmmmm.

I don't want to splash the 75 euro on a boiler just yet. That 20 euro stock pot looks decent enough and if I move on to a boiler it would still get use for stew and so on.

What was the size of the partial v's full brew that you were doing?

Thats fair enough, I was of the same opinion at the time myself, just looking back I wished I had of got a boiler. 11lt(i think) but you lose a lot during the boil, then topped it up.

Knifey Spoony

I got the HBC boiler and wort chiller combo in the mail today. Very happy with the boiler. It seems very solid and sturdy . Hoping to get a test boil going in it over the weekend. The chiller seems a bit on the small side, but will probably still do the job.

Hoping to throw on my first extract brew next weekend. It's going to be an American style, single hop pale ale with Amarillo and caramel malt.

BeerNut

Knifey Spoony wrote: »

The chiller seems a bit on the small side, but will probably still do the job.

I don't know that chiller, but the important thing with immersion chillers is to give it a swirl every couple of minutes (pick it up by the in-pipe) so it chills evenly. It can halve the chilling time, I learned. Eventually

Knifey Spoony

Yeah I was planning on doing something like that alright. Think I've seen you mention that at some stage before. Gonna give the whole setup a test before I go "live" with it.

Khannie

So just verifying - I have all the kit for brewing cider. The only other things I need for an extract brew are a stock pot and thermometer, is that correct?

BeerNut

You'll need a method of chilling, and if you're steeping speciality grains some muslin or cheesecloth.

Khannie

If I'm doing a partial boil, would adding chilled, sanitised water be enough?

How important is it to get the temperature down very quickly?

Lovely Bloke

Khannie wrote: »

If I'm doing a partial boil, would adding chilled, sanitised water be enough?

How important is it to get the temperature down very quickly?

It depends on how much water you are adding.

I've found that going from a boiling 10 litre wort, and adding 10 more litres of water that has been in a freezer for a couple of hours to drop the temp to about 75degrees or so.

It then takes a good hour in an ice bath to get the wort down into the 20, and longer into the late teens to pitch the yeast.

where is your ice bath going to be? The bath in the bathroom? an outdoor bath/box full of water? It's amazing the speed that the water heats up outside the fermenter as the heat dissipates, you need to keep adding ice or cold water, otherwise your fermenter is just sitting with 75 degree wort in a lukewarm or even warm bath.

The bath in the bathroom holds more water, but there are poo particles in there

the you have the added temptation to keep checking the temperature, could introduce infection this way too

Khannie

Well that all sounds like a lot of hassle. What if I just leave it to passively cool overnight? Will this negatively affect it in some way?

drumswan

You will buy a chiller eventually, it cuts at least an hour, sometimes several hours of your brew day

macnug

Khannie wrote: »

If I'm doing a partial boil, would adding chilled, sanitised water be enough?

How important is it to get the temperature down very quickly?

In my experience just adding cold water was not enough. you dont want to pitch the yeast in wort any higher than 25c. I found about 15-20 min in an ice/cold water bath (changing the water every so often) would bring the undiluted wort down to < 50c, once its below 50c, topping up will give you a better chance of getting below 25c filled, of course this depends on temp of tap water/time of year.

Lovely Bloke

macnug wrote: »

In my experience just adding cold water was not enough. you dont want to pitch the yeast in wort any higher than 25c. I found about 15-20 min in an ice/cold water bath (changing the water every so often) would bring the undiluted wort down to < 50c, once its below 50c, topping up will give you a better chance of getting below 25c filled, of course this depends on temp of tap water/time of year.

never thought of doing it this way. But we have a chiller we are using for the first time tomorrow.

BeerNut

Khannie wrote: »

Well that all sounds like a lot of hassle.

It is, most any way you slice it.

Khannie wrote: »

What if I just leave it to passively cool overnight? Will this negatively affect it in some way?

It is a done thing, especially in Australia. Search around for no-chill brewing and you'll find lots of information on it I'm sure. The two big issues I'd say are infection risk and cloudiness, though the latter is more of a cosmetic thing.

If you're fairly sure you're going to keep brewing, get a chiller.

Khannie

Hmmmm. 60 euro. It's not a small amount.

For now I think I'll go with the stock pot you mentioned, partial boil, chilled water and otherwise passive cooling.

BeerNut

Handy types make them from copper piping wrapped around a paint tin. I'm sure there are loads of how-tos online.

dasdog

BeerNut wrote: »

I don't know that chiller, but the important thing with immersion chillers is to give it a swirl every couple of minutes (pick it up by the in-pipe) so it chills evenly. It can halve the chilling time, I learned. Eventually

Perhaps I'm overdoing it but I swirl the chiller every 30 seconds or so. Temp can be felt rapidly rising on the outlet side after creating convection currents so as above don’t grasp by that side. I’m starting to view it as a challenge bringing the cooling time down

Khannie wrote: »

Hmmmm. 60 euro. It's not a small amount.

For now I think I'll go with the stock pot you mentioned, partial boil, chilled water and otherwise passive cooling.

It's a one off buy that should in theory last a lifetime. Also factor in garden hose, connectors etc if you don't already have them. ALDI were doing offers around this time last year on the bits and pieces.

Khannie

dasdog wrote: »

Perhaps I'm overdoing it but I swirl the chiller every 30 seconds or so. Temp can be felt rapidly rising on the outlet side after creating convection currents so as above don’t grasp by that side. I’m starting to view it as a challenge bringing the cooling time down

Sounds like the kind of thing that could be automated with a modicum of effort.

Khannie

is there much of a quality difference between spray malt and liquid malt extract?

Lovely Bloke

Just finished a brew day

Made a basic red ale recipe, we made this last time too, so just want to make sure we can make a similar brew consistently, we opened a brew we made 6 weeks ago, bottled 3 weeks ago, it's a pretty decent red ale, nothing exciting, nothing groundbreaking, but nice enough. If we can replicate it with today's brew I'll be happy, then we start tweaking it.

We also did our first "half brew" - a 5 litre boil, topped up with 5 litres cold water. We lost about 2 litres of the boil to evaporation, and with 3 litres in the burco we had to cut the boil short by about 15 minutes. This is going to be a Black IPA, dry hopped with Challanger and Magnum for a week before bottling.

But the big revelation of today was the copper immersion chiller. Couldn't believe the time it took to chill the big brew - we're talking a 10 litre boil, topped up with another 10 litres of water from the freezer, FV into a box filled with water and ice packs, and the chiller into the FV. It took about ten minutes to get it from 50 to 18 degrees, amazed by that. I think it's worth the outlay, bearing in mind there are 6 of us all chipping in.

loyatemu

how much water does the chiller use? (it's free now but it won't be in 6 months time).

Khannie

I was wondering this too. Partly from an eco perspective as well as a cost one.

drumswan

Brewing uses lots of water, not least the cooling bit. I use the initial hot water runoff to do the cleanup afterwards and most of the rest on the garden.

Khannie

Khannie wrote: »

is there much of a quality difference between spray malt and liquid malt extract?

Bit of a bump on this and another question -

There seems to be a preference for electric boilers over large (catering sized) stock pots. Is there a reason for that? Price looks approximately the same. We have a decent gas hob.

drumswan

Khannie wrote: »

Bit of a bump on this and another question -

There seems to be a preference for electric boilers over large (catering sized) stock pots. Is there a reason for that? Price looks approximately the same. We have a decent gas hob.

Boiler is portable and more suited to where I am, Ive a standard electric hob, doubt I'd get enough heat into a 25+ litre boil with it, if I did bringing it to the boil would take forever.

Ive had slightly better results with DME myself, though I havent really done an exact equivalent beer using DME and LME to compare. LME is considerably cheaper in the online homebrew spots. DME is also handy to use for priming, yeast starters etc as you can measure it out more easily.

BeerNut

Khannie wrote: »

There seems to be a preference for electric boilers over large (catering sized) stock pots. Is there a reason for that?

For me the steam is one issue, boiling wort is not like cooking a stew: there's a lot of steam. Boilover is another: wiping down my brewing table and hosing off the patio is much more conducive to domestic harmony than scraping burnt encrusted DME off a hob. I know of one bad boilover that gummed up the gas jets of a hob completely. The other question is running wort into the fermenter. My boiler has a hop strainer and tap. The best I could do with a stockpot was pour in through a sieve, losing the handy filtration effect of the hop bed.

Khannie

BeerNut wrote: »

For me the steam is one issue, boiling wort is not like cooking a stew: there's a lot of steam.

Tell me more. I'm lazy, so I was hoping to do as large a brew as possible. I recently did 2 x 30L of cider and the hassle reduction versus two separate brews was lovely so I was eyeballing some of the very large stock pots (like 60-75L type size) with the thought of doing one large brew for two fermenting buckets. I wasn't expecting steam to be an issue though.

This is a smidge academic for now. I'll pick up one of those 19L ones you mentioned before for my first few brews.

BeerNut wrote: »

Boilover is another: wiping down my brewing table and hosing off the patio is much more conducive to domestic harmony than scraping burnt encrusted DME off a hob. I know of one bad boilover that gummed up the gas jets of a hob completely.

I hear people mentioning it quite frequently. Not to be funny, but it doesn't happen with stew, why so much with brewing? (or is it just more disastrous when it does happen?)

BeerNut wrote: »

The other question is running wort into the fermenter. My boiler has a hop strainer and tap. The best I could do with a stockpot was pour in through a sieve, losing the handy filtration effect of the hop bed.

I don't quite understand this, but I suppose I will after I've done a brew.

BeerNut

Khannie wrote: »

Tell me more.

Stick a big pot of water on the hob. Bring it to the boil and boil it at full tilt for an hour: that's how much steam is involved.

Khannie wrote: »

why so much with brewing?

It's not enough to just simmer a wort: you want an active, turbulent, rolling boil. When it's a concentrated sugar-and-protein solution that's being boiled, it will foam and boil over if not carefully managed. And once that stuff burns on, it sticks.

Khannie wrote: »

I don't quite understand this, but I suppose I will after I've done a brew.

It's a fairly minor technical issue, I guess, but you'll get clearer beer and cleaner flavours by running the wort through a strainer and out of a tap in the boiler rather than just tipping it from a stockpot through a sieve into the fermenter.

Khannie

BeerNut wrote: »

It's not enough to just simmer a wort

This is the key I was missing I suppose. What would happen if you did just simmer it?

BeerNut

Your hop utilisation will suck. A vigorous boil gets your hops doing what hops are meant to do*.


*by everyone except God

Khannie

This sounds like an interesting experiment to me. The idea of boiling the arse out of something with the lid off for 60 minutes makes my gas bill wallet / electricity bill wallet / save the earth head cringe.

What do commercial brewers do? I would guess that energy costs are a real issue for them.

BeerNut

Khannie wrote: »

What do commercial brewers do? I would guess that energy costs are a real issue for them.

Yup, especially as 90 minute boils aren't unusual. They get the most efficient equipment they can: steam jackets and whatnot. And they leave the lid on.

loyatemu

boilers seem to be 2Kw or so (same as a standard kettle) so an hour's boil will cost you ~40c. YMMV with gas.

Is the lid left off just to prevent boiling over?

BeerNut

I leave my lid ajar. It boils over if fully on.

drumswan

Khannie wrote: »

This sounds like an interesting experiment to me. The idea of boiling the arse out of something with the lid off for 60 minutes makes my gas bill wallet / electricity bill wallet / save the earth head cringe.

What do commercial brewers do? I would guess that energy costs are a real issue for them.

Simmering wort wouldnt produce drinkable beer.

http://byo.com/stories/item/1650-wort-boiling-homebrew-science

I doubt a non commercial hob could effectively boil 60-70L of wort.

Khannie

drumswan wrote: »

Simmering wort wouldnt produce drinkable beer.

http://byo.com/stories/item/1650-wort-boiling-homebrew-science

I read all of that. It doesn't really answer it for me, but I'll take your word for it.

drumswan wrote: »

I doubt a non commercial hob could effectively boil 60-70L of wort.

I was thinking more like, say 55 odd litres in a 75L vessel with the lid on (or barely ajar). We have one very decent ring. I'll see how it goes with the 19L one anyway. It will be an information point I suppose.

Knifey Spoony

I thought that you weren't meant to leave the lid on during the boil. Leaving it on while getting to the boil would be fine but during the boil:

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Once you achieve a boil, only partially cover the pot, if at all. Why? Because in wort there are sulfur compounds that evolve and boil off. If they aren't removed during the boil, the can form dimethyl sulfide which contributes a cooked cabbage or corn-like flavor to the beer. If the cover is left on the pot, or left on such that the condensate from the lid can drip back in, then these flavors will have a much greater chance of showing up in the finished beer.[/FONT]

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter7-2.html

Khannie

Partially open it is.

Condensed steam is relatively pure though, no?

BeerNut

It's not just steam, though. Steam doesn't smell malty or hoppy

Khannie

BeerNut wrote: »

It's not just steam, though. Steam doesn't smell malty or hoppy

No, of course lots of chemicals are being released. I just mean the steam that condenses on the lid and goes back in with a partially covered pot should be relatively clean. That's my (*very*) limited understanding.