Beer Forum

I'm going to try B3's fire in the hole mini mash and I have a question about late additions of extract to reduce caramalization. Usually I would add about 30% of the extract at the start of the boil and the rest at about 5 or 10 minutes. However, with a mini mash, I am getting a lot of sugar out of the grain, so can I further reduce the amount of extract that I add at the beginning of the boil?

When I minimash, I don't add any extract until the end of the boil. You can estimate what percentage of your fermentables you expect to get from the minimash, and subtract that amount out of your early extract addition if you want, just to keep the wort density the same as what you're used to, but other than altering the hop utilization due to the difference in wort density, I've found no drawbacks to adding all of the extract late.

Do you find that you wind up with a beer that is more or less bitter than the kit would have normally made?

If you keep everything else the same, and only change from steeping to partial mashing, then to keep the wort density the same you just need to figure out the percentage of fermentables the partial mash will add, and subtract that from the amount of extract you add early. That said, there are styles that lend themselves to early extract additions, and styles that work better with late. A Scottish 80/-, for example, may be a good one to do more early extract additions on, since it is a low hopped beer and a bit of kettle carmelization is desired. For my APA, I like to partial mash and add all of my extract late, so I can keep kettle carmelization to a minimum, and maximize my hop utilization. So, yes, if changing the procedure results in a lower or higher wort density, you will have more or less hop utilization, but depending on the style, that you may want to go either way.