"Intermediate" brewing

Hi all.

I've been brewing for a while now using kits (with varying success) and I'd like to go for something a little more challenging.

I've got a book that describes a slightly more involved process (what it calls Intermediate Brewing) that uses unhopped malt extract and starts from there. I would love to go all grain, but I don't have the time or equipment to do so, so this seems like a great compromise.

I've got a couple of questions, though, and I wonder if someone could clear them up...

Firstly, at the end of the boiling process where hops have been added to the (what I assume is technically) wort, it says you need to cool the wort using an ice bath or something similar. What I want to know, is why can't I just put the near-boiling wort straight into the FV (just as you would do with a kit) and add the requisite amount of cold water to bring it up to the required volume? What's the need for the extra cooling? Isn't it just a matter of getting it cool enough to pitch the yeast?

Secondly, is it possible to scale down the recipes in the book by just reducing everything proportionally? I think I'd like to start with smaller batches (I don't have a big enough brew pot plus my FVs are full) such as a gallon a time to fit in demijohns. The recipe calls for 2.5kg of dry malt extract and 25g of various hops to make a 5 gallon batch (amongst other things) . If I just used .5kg and 5g respectively, would it still work out?

Thanks in advance. :thumb:

Hi Stoo and welcome!

The idea of cooling the wort rapidly is to get the cold break - a point where tons of **** from the boil comes out and settles at the bottom of the brew. If you manage this before adding your wort to the FV, depending on the setup, it's possible to keep the **** in the boiler. Otherwise, pitching hot extract wort onto cold water in the FV is fine (it's what I do), but you'll see the cold break in the FV, and as a result, you'll get more **** in the bottom - so a little extra care is needed when you siphon.

Bringing everything down in proportion is fine, though boiling times need to be kept the same. It's a good idea to boil as much as you can together - if you just boil a little and add to a larger mass of water in the FV, you'll get a darker brew with less efficient hop bitterness extraction (if I remember correctly).

Hope this helps!

You can downscale but you will be making so little beer its not going to be worth the effort.

Do not try and just boil a little bit and then add lots of water to bring it up to full volume.

I tried this recently and it DOES NOT WORK. Its just a waste of time, money, effort, and emotional investment.

The reason it doesnt work is because your hop utilization is virtually zero at fractional volumes and unless you can boil for 60-90mins you will get cloudy, sweet, flavourless gunk.

Trust me, save up for a boiler rather than throwing money away trying to use pots and pans. You can make really good beer this way.

Edit - I quickly realised that extract was more expensive than all-grain and that the set-up costs of extract were not that different to AG. So I went AG.

You should have a think about if you want to take your brewing to the next level. If you do, then buy or make an AG brewery, do a couple of extracts for practise then go AG.

Extract brewing produces good beer . . . but you have to be prepared to move from bringing 6 pints of water to the boil and dissolving concentrated hopped wort in that and topping up with cold water, to boiling 30L of sweet wort, to which you add hops, boil for 90 minutes and then cool, before straining off and adding yeast.

You are talking of taking 3 hours to make your wort (At least) so while you can scale down the recipe . . . to make 1 gallon take the 5 gallon recipe and divide everything by 5 . . . apart from the boil time that will still be 90 minutes . . . so ask yourself is this a worthwhile investment of your time?

The 'only' thing that extract misses out is the mashing and sparging . . . but you can, if using fresh extract, make damn fine pale beers . . . dark beers are a bit more of a challenge but not significantly so. . . . but you will need a boiler capable of boiling 30L of liquid (in an ideal world . . . you can get away with only boiling 25L, and adding extra water during the boil), and ideally a chiller of some sort . . . Immersion coil would be perfect, and fairly cheap and easy to make.

Moving from kit brewing to extract is not quite the paradigm shift in quality that moving to all grain is, but, it is a significant one if accompanied by boiling the full volume of wort. Concentrated shorter boils really just don't work . .

Thanks for the advice guys.

jonewer said:

I quickly realised that extract was more expensive than all-grain and that the set-up costs of extract were not that different to AG. So I went AG.

Click to expand...

Having read what you guys have posted here, plus other posts elsewhere on the forum that elude to the same thing, I think AG is probably the route I'm going to take.

I have a friend who's offered to have me sit in on his next brew day, then lend me some of his kit to have a go myself.
Ultimately I hope to make some kit myself - I like making things.

BigStoo said:

Thanks for the advice guys.

jonewer said:

I quickly realised that extract was more expensive than all-grain and that the set-up costs of extract were not that different to AG. So I went AG.

Click to expand...

Having read what you guys have posted here, plus other posts elsewhere on the forum that elude to the same thing, I think AG is probably the route I'm going to take.

I have a friend who's offered to have me sit in on his next brew day, then lend me some of his kit to have a go myself.
Ultimately I hope to make some kit myself - I like making things.

Click to expand...

If you're good at making stuff then you're away!

I'm rubbish at making stuff so had to stump up the readies, but it was worth it!