… Below is the outline of your new brewing method.: From website:
Steep the crushed grains in 2-3 gallons of 150„a water for 30 minutes.
Remove the grain from the water (Wort)
Heat wort to boiling.
Add Irish moss and bittering (or boiling) hops, 1 cup of your malt extract (syrup or powder) and boil for 45 minutes to 60 minutes. Wait until the end of the boil to add the remainder of the malt sugar.
Add any other hops during the boil as per your beer recipe.
Remove your pot from your heat source, and add your malt sugars to the wort. Stir the sugars to dissolve into the beer. The temperature of your wort will drop to about 170„a.
Let the beer sit at this high temperature for 10 minutes to sanitize the malt sugars you just added to the beer.
Cool your wort with a wort chiller or by adding it to cold water.
Add yeast when the temperature of your beer is 80„a or less.
Ferment your beer as you normally would from this point on.
There is one very important thing to remember with this method. Your hop extraction will increase by about 25%, so reduce your boiling hops accordingly. …
My Questions. 1. Ok, per step one, I do 2.5 gallon batches, so if I reduce the water to say 1.25 gallons for steep/boil, topping off fermenter with water, will results be similar in this method?
Question 2. Basically I want a much shorter boil, about 30 minutes tops! I’d like to get my target Ibu pretty close to recipe. Yeah I could experiment but that cost $$ and time. Any help much appreciated!
Dave
Quality brewing software will generally include a scaling feature that takes OG, Color and hop utilization into consideration. If you are planning to pursue the hobby, brewing software is in your future. Why not make the investment now?
BeerSmith, Brewers Friend and Brewfather all offer free trials.
For brewing small batches, the above process is somewhat overly complicated. You can and should boil the entire volume. You will boil off a little less than a gallon of water after an hour, regardless of batch size. So then if you want to brew 2.5 gallons, why not just start with maybe 3.25-3.5 gallons. I would modify the steps as follows:
1) Add the steeping grains to 3.25-3.5 gallons water at room temperature while heating up towards the boil.
2) When the temperature reaches approximately 170 F, remove the kettle from the burner, remove the steeping grains, AND add some or all of the extract. (See my link below for more details.)
3) Return the kettle to the boil.
4) Add bittering hops and boil for an hour.
5) Add any other hops during the boil as per your beer recipe.
6) Remove your pot from your heat source, and add any remaining malt sugars to the wort. Stir the sugars to dissolve into the beer.
7) Let the beer sit for 10 minutes to sanitize the malt sugars you just added to the beer.
8 ) Cool your wort with a wort chiller or by immersing the kettle in a cold water bath.
9) Add yeast when the temperature of your beer is 70 F or less.
10) Ferment your beer as you normally would from this point on.
“There is one very important thing to remember with this method. Your hop extraction will increase by about 25%, so reduce your boiling hops accordingly.”
I actually tend to agree with the hop utilization note. If leaving the boiled wort hot for 10 minutes before chilling, alpha acids will continue to be isomerized, increasing the IBUs by some extent… however I think it may be closer to ~15%, maybe not 25%. But it’s a consideration worth experimenting with.
If you shorten the boil to 30 minutes, actually this will balance out the extra IBUs quite well indeed.
Here’s my standard guidance for brewing extract recipes (click to expand):
