To boil or not to boil

Caribs

Relative newbie to the homebrewing and currently waiting for my latest batch of Craft IPA to condition before I start guzzling. Based on previous advice I've kept the heatmat well away this time so hopeful for a better result.

Reckon I'm ready to break out and start experimenting but I'm confused as to whether or not boiling the LME is required. Any of the kits I've used so far don't call for boiling save for adding a few litres of boiling water (I assumed to help dissolve the LME) at the start and I know the instructions from here are don't follow the kit instructions. However, if I want to play around with adding different hops at different points this requires boiling which brings me back to square one!

I've looked up the different threads on this site and many refer to boiling the wort but others don't so thoroughly confused.

BeerNut

If you want to impart bitterness and flavour from hops, you need to boil. There are various hackjob ways of boiling a proportion of the LME with the hops and adding it to the kit mix, but to be brutally honest I think they're a waste of effort. If you want to experiment with recipes then you have passed the point where kits are any good to you. Make full- or partial-boil extract beers instead.

fobster

This Excel file was made by a lad over at Aussiehomebrewer.com (a recommended site), I found it very useful when I was doing Extract brews.