Beer Forum

I've brewed a few times since I moved to this small apartment and it's been hit or miss, mainly miss. I'm sitting down and figuring out a method of brewing that will let me brew efficiently and repeatably.

I've got a pretty crappy gas stove in my apartment. That's what I've figured out from sitting down and timing how long it takes to heat certain amounts of water. I got a thin walled enamel pot to test this stuff as I've always had problems brewing with a stainless pot with the 3/8" heat diffuser on the bottom. This new pot seems like it really struggles to bring 2 gallons of water to a good rolling boil without blasting the thing on full-high, at which point I feel like I'm going to burn up my range. I've been brewing smaller 3 gallon batches to compensate for this, but I want to move back up to 5 gallons.

Looking at the numbers I've come up with, It's a lot more efficient to heat 2 pots with 1 gallon than 1 pot with 2 gallons. If I've got 2 pots, could I boil the hops in one with no malt for the usual amount of time and get really good IBU efficiency, while boiling the hop-less wort in a different pot for a different amount of time to minimize carmelization to help me get a lower FG, then just combine the two in the carboy? With such a method I could time things out to start heating the water for the hops during mashing and save a lot of time.

And if I'm thinking right, wouldn't boiling hops in a 1.000 s.g. liquid maximize the IBU's?

I wouldn't boil hops in plain water. I made the mistake of trynig this and the result was a disgusting grassy tea. I think you'll need some sugar in there for it to work properly.

You could try the 'extract late' method, where you only add a portion of your extract to maintain the concentration relative to a full boil the whole time. For example, if you boil 2 gallons, add 2/5 of your extract for 60 min, then throw the rest in at 15 min just to sanitize. This will help lots of things, mostly getting rid of the treacle-like flavor you get from concentrated extract boils.

I've boiled all the hops for a 10 gallon recipe in a 2 gallon pot before and it works just fine. I had the gravity of the small pot the same as the large pot, though.

I suspect, but have not yet tried, that you could make an IIPA with half as many hops by boiling the hops in a small kettle of 1.030 wort while boiling the larger pot with most of the malt at 1.070 or whatever. Mix them together at flameout.

If you do this, please take copious notes and send that beer to a couple of different competitions to see what the judges have to say.

I do follow the late-extract method but that 2nd malt addition absolutely kills the boil no matter how slowly I add it. I just stir it in and let it sit for about 10 minutes to sterilize it before adding it to the carboy, otherwise I'd have to heat it for 10-15 minutes just to boil it for the last 15 minutes, and that makes no sense.

Since the purpose of late-extract is hop utilization anyway, its looking like i'm going to use just enough extract to bring the gravity up on the hop pot to what I want, then dump the rest of it into the malt pot.

How much does the malt flavor get changed by the boil time, besides the slight caramelization? Any problem with doing a 60 minute boil on the hops and a 15 minute boil on the malt?

Brewed a 3 gallon batch yesterday, went pretty well aside from needing to use my old "big & thick" pot for the hops. Having that extra headspace in my malt pot prevented a nasty boilover... +1 for this method already. I didn't account for boil-off - next time I need to use more water in the hops pot. The malt pot didn't boil off too badly.

I started with 1 gal total in the hops pot using water + 1 lbs of LME, ended up with about half a gal. Initial S.G. was 1.032, ending S.G. was probably around 1.060. I'm going to use 1 1/3 gallons total next time.

It was kind of interesting in that I did a good strong boil on the hops for 45 minutes and a light boil on the malt for 30. I got the malt boiling at 30 minutes into the hops, so I ended up adding them to the carboy at 2 different times.

I'll post up when I find out how it came out.

Total Volume: 3 gallons

Hops Pot Volume: 1 gallons
Hops Pot Starting S.G.: 1.032
Boil-off: Approx 1/2 gallon
Ingredients: 1lbs Light LME
0.5 oz Cascade 6.0% (45 mins)
0.5 oz Cascade 6.0% (30 mins)
0.5 oz Cascade 6.0% (15 mins)
0.5 oz Cascade 6.0% (aroma)

Malt Pot Volume: 1 gallons
Boil Time: 30 mins
4 lbs Light LME
0.25 lbs Special Roast
1 whirlfloc tab (15 mins)

500ml Yeast Starter from a US-05 packet with best-by date of 11/08.

Just kicked the keg last night. Everyone who's had it agrees it was a lot better than everything else I've brewed since I moved to my apt.

I brewed the 5 gal B3 IPA kit on Sunday, in a record start to finish time of 3 hours, excluding clean-up. Not bad at all, considering I wasn't hurrying and that's about how long I used to take with a good stove.

Also the first time I used FermCapS, the stuff is amazing.