Beer Forum

I am currently an extract brewer and am only able to boil 3.5 gallons on my range. After listening to all of the shows I will be ordering a new brew kettle and a propane burner soon. I wanted to brew a recipe from brewing classic styles that calls for 6 gallons of work and 5.5 to the ferment. I wanted to know if I could cut the recipe in half and brew 3.5 gallons down to 3 gallons to rack to the fermenter without impacting the flavor profile? I was also wondering if a counting for a 1/2 gallon of evaporation would be enough?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

First off welcome to the insanity!

Yes you can cut a recipe down and get pretty good results. I think you have your numbers figured out pretty well, depending on your elevation and atmospheric pressure your evaporation rate may be a little higher or lower. I usually plan for around 15%/hr. thus you would boil off .525 gallons/hour.

Another option is to brew the whole batch. Just follow the recipe as written and hold back 3-4 gallons of water. Then use sterile water to top up your fermenter to the desired volume. As long as the water has been previously boiled and cooled you won't have any issues with sanitation.

Best of luck!

I am located in Colorado Springs.

If I were to boil 3 gallons and add 4 gallons of water won't that impact the hop utilization?

Yeah, it does since the wort is more concentrated, but you can mitigate that to a degree by doing a late extract addition. Just add a little bit of the extract up front like the recipe calls for, then add the rest in the last 15 minutes of the boil. Make sure you remove the pot from the burner before adding the late extract, or you'll end up with a bunch of scorched extract on the bottom of your pot.

From everything I have heard on the show they say that doing a full wort boil is going to give you the best results. If I am going for quality over quantity would you recommend the full wort boil or to top off to 5.5 -6 gallons?

A full wort boil is preferable, if you can do it. I know before I got my propane cooker, I could never do a full wort boil on my stove. I did the partial boil thing with late extract, though, and made really good beer. I also did split boils, doing 3.5 gallons each in two pots, and adding my hops equally between the two, then combining them to ferment.

linuxelf wrote:Yeah, it does since the wort is more concentrated, but you can mitigate that to a degree by doing a late extract addition. Just add a little bit of the extract up front like the recipe calls for, then add the rest in the last 15 minutes of the boil. Make sure you remove the pot from the burner before adding the late extract, or you'll end up with a bunch of scorched extract on the bottom of your pot.

You can make really good beer with this method. Don't be afraid to try it.

Have you tried putting the bigger kettle over two burners on the stove? I couldn't do a full wort boil until I figure out that trick.