Concentrated vs Full wort boils

[tjthresh]

Most extract recipes call for a concentrated boil. If I chose to use a full boil, will that change the amounts of the ingredence I use?

[MagTheGrate]

It shouldn't change the amount of ingredients at all. Doing a full boil your simply adding the extra water at the beginning, rather then at the end, per the instructions.

full boils are the way to go if you can swing it... Less caramalizing, you can make lighter (in color) beers, better hop utilization, and you have less chance of infection from the water you add post-boil

on the down side, you'll want a wort chiller to cool the whole batch fast.

-Mag

[Fast_Eddy]

Just to follow up a bit on what MagTheGrate said:

...Less caramalizing, you can make lighter (in color) beers..


The wort won't darken as much when doing a full boil. In a more concentrated wort caramelization and Maillard reactions occur much more frequently. Both result in darkening of the wort.

Caramelization occurs when you knock the water off of a sugar.

Maillard reactions occur between sugars and amino acids or short proteins. I don't remember the specifics but Maillard reactions can result in off flavors. And I think some other things affect their probability too - like pH, maybe.

Anyway long way of saying I agree that you should use a full boil if you have the capacity.

[wortchillergoal]

I always do a full 5 gal. boil. I have had great results. I offer the following. Do get a wortchiller. Important, pick a good brew spot as 5 gals, of wort is heavy. I find that dumping the wort from pot to fementer areates it very well.

[beerman1001001]

With a full wort boil, you are going to get some increased hop utilization, so you may need to decrease the hops slightly if you are shooting for specific IBU's. I'm not sure what the formula is, since I usually put more hops than the recipe calls for anyway, but I think you get about 33% more IBU's out of the same amount of hops. Someone else correct me if I'm wrong.

[sallad]

i noticed, for example, a 1.5gal boil with ~6lbs extract and 2oz of hops was less hoppy when compared to a similar partial mash brew with the same OG and hops that had a higher boil volume. hop utilization can be quite higher when boiling with a few extra gallons! i find it almost easier to use boil volume to control my IBUs. for example, rather than using 2.2 oz in a 3gal boil to hit a target IBU, i'll just bump the boil volume up to maybe 4gal and use 2oz hops.

btw, its nice to use a recipe calculator to help with these calculations!

[brewmonkey]

Anytime you have a higher gravity during the boil you will need to adjust your hop calculations to account for it. IIRC anything above 13P (1.052ish) is about where you need to start adjusting. The higher the wort concentration the more you will have to adjust your hops.

Ray Daniels covers this very well and in fairly easy to understand terms in "Designing Great Beers" starting on page 72.

[Fast_Eddy]

Originally posted by brewmonkey


Ray Daniels covers this very well and in fairly easy to understand terms in "Designing Great Beers" starting on page 72.

One of the BEST books out there, too, IMHO

I learn more from it each day. It has it all: history, style guidance, brewing tips, brewing chemistry....I would recommend it to everybody!

[bazooka]

I've done about three full wort boils now, and have been lucky with using ice to cool the wort. I make a ton of it a week or so before, and store it all in rubbermaid containers that I keep in my deep freezer. After placing the pot into the sink with some cold water, I continue putting in ice until it's all melted. By then, the temp. seems to be cool enough to pitch the yeast....