Today we look at a method for malt extract brewers that can improve the quality and color of your extract beer. Both liquid and dried malt extract beers suffer from an effect called carmelization when brewing. Carmelization occurs when liquid extract or excess sugars settle to the bottom of the brew pot during the boil and the sugars carmelize (harden) in the bottom of the pot.

This typically darkens the beer, and in extreme cases can also affect the taste of the beer. Obviously this is a problem for brewers of light colored beers. The effect is also common in high gravity beers in small brew pots because of the higher proportion of extract to water when boiling.

To avoid the ill effects of carmelization, malt extract brewers should delay the addition of the majority of their extracts until late in the boiling process. The extract must be added late enough in the boil to avoid carmelization, but early enough to assure that the extract is sterilized. Boiling the extract for about 15 minutes is a good balance.

I recommend adding a small amount of malt extract (perhaps 15-25%) early in the boil if using separate hops. The sugars and enzymes in the extract aid in extracting alpha acids (bitterness) from the hops. Boiling hops with a small amount of extract will result in smoother hop flavors and appropriate bitterness that you cant achieve with plain water alone.

Late extract additions do present one challenge for the brewer. Late extract additions increase the bitterness of the beer. Predicting the International Bitterness Units (IBUs) of late extract additions to match your target style is mathematically complex. Most brewing software and spreadsheets are simply not designed to handle multiple hop and late malt extract additions in the boil. The gravity and bitterness of the boil will vary with each ingredient added.

To do the calculation by hand you would need to calculate the gravity of the boil at each stage, bitterness contribution from each hop addition taking this gravity into account and then combine these into one overall IBU number for the brew. To compensate, some brewers use a rule of thumb such as reduce hops by 20% when using late extract brews. Another method is to calculate the hops addition without the late extract and then add 5-10% more hops to compensate for lower utilization during the last 15 minutes of the boil.

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When brewing beer, its critical to quickly cool your brew before adding yeast to minimize the chance of infection. Today we look at the advantages of rapidly cooling your wort after boiling, and also how to build a simple immersion chiller using copper tubing purchased from your local hardware store.

Rapidly cooling your wort after boiling can significantly improve your finished beers clarity and flavor.

Some of the advantages include:

* Reducing the chance of infection – your wort is vulnerable to bacterial infection when it is warm and has no yeast added. You want to minimize the chance of infection by cooling rapidly and pitching the yeast as soon as practical.
* Improved clarity – When you rapidly cool hot wort, many of the heavy proteins and tannins will no longer be soluble and will fall out of the wort. Siphoning the wort off of this cold break will result in a improved clarity and improve taste as well.
* Reduction of volatile compounds – Dimethyl Sulfide (DMS) which gives beer a strong sweet corn flavor can continue to break down after boiling and may be carried forward into the finished beer unless you rapidly cool the beer (Ref: Brewers Handbook by Goldhammer).

Quickly cooling 5-10 gallons of boiling hot wort does present some problems for the home brewer. Ideally you would like to reach fermentation temperature as quickly as possible, though something in the 10-20 minute range is acceptable. Commercial brewers use elaborate two-stage heat exchangers with a glycol coolant to achieve the final fermentation temperature.

Home brewers often choose something a bit less elaborate. Some popular wort cooling systems include:
Ice Bath

Often beginners immerse their entire boiling pot into a tub full of ice water. This can be an effective method, but it typically takes longer than the methods listed below, since heat can only be transferred through the hot pot itself.
Immersion Chillers

The simplest solution for most homebrewers, an immersion chiller (pictured above) is a coil of 30-50 feet of copper tubing that is immersed in the hot wort in the pot. The tubing is connected to a sink or garden hose and cool water is continuously run through the chiller to cool the wort. Since 50 feet of copper tubing has a large surface area, 5-10 gallons of wort can be chilled rapidly using this method.

Immersion chillers may also include a second stage, consisting of an additional coil before the main coil that is immersed in a ice water bath to lower the temperature of the water as it goes into the wort. A two stage immersion chiller cools even more quickly and helps in cases where the tap water going into the chiller might be at or near the desired fermentation temperature.

Immersion chillers are also very easy to make, as described below, and also easy to clean since the outside of the coil simply needs to be wiped down and washed after use.
Counter-flow Chillers

A counter-flow chiller is a coil that contains two tubes of different diameters, one placed inside of the other. Cold water is pumped through the outer tube while the wort is siphoned or pumped in the opposite direction in the inner tube. Counter-flow chillers are extremely efficient and can cool wort very quickly.

The only downside for homebrewers is that they can be more difficult to clean and sterilize. As soon as you finish using a counter-flow chiller, you need to flush it rapidly with hot water and run cleaning fluid through it. Also it is a bit harder to construct a counter-flow chiller at home.
Building an Immersion Chiller

An immersion chiller (shown in the picture above) is simple for the average brewer to construct and maintain. The basic materials can be bought at the local hardware store and assembled in about 30 minutes.

Materials Needed:

* 50 feet of 3/8 outer diameter copper tubing
* 20 feet of 3/8 inner diameter plastic tubing
* 4-6 3/8 hose clamps
* Garden hose adapter (female)
* Compression fittings/adapters to mate garden hose adapter to the 3/8 copper tubing

Start by making a large diameter coil from the copper tubing. Make the coil small enough to fit in your boil pot. The best way to form the coil is to wrap the tubing around a large coffee can, bottom of a corney keg, or other large cylinder.

Leave both ends of the copper tubing sticking up above the height of your pot, and bend them 90 degrees so they extend horizontally over the edges. On one end, attach the fittings to the garden hose adapter, and to the other attach your plastic hose with clamps. Attach the garden hose and run water through it to check for leaks.

For a two stage cooler, attach a second smaller coil to one end and place the garden hose fitting on it. Join the two coils with a length of plastic tubing. When operating, place the first coil into a cold bath of ice water and the second into your wort. This will cool the water going into the wort, making your system more efficient.

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How soon is too soon to make the jump from extract to all-grain brewing?
This is my checklist for this you should be comfortable with before making the big move.

• Full wort boils
• Capability to chill that wort using a chiller of some sort
• Handle some basic math for calculating mash-in volumes, wort dilution, and concentration to hit final gravities and mash efficiency
• Confidence in your sanitation practices
• You can afford the addictive nature of adding more toys to your brewhouse as you get more and more involved in the all-grain process (like larger kettle and propane burners)
• Youve readsome of the popular textsand websites about sparging and mashing and have a good mental picture of how the process is going to go.

Moving up to a few mini/partial mash batches is a helpful way to get a good idea of what the issues are with trying to mash-in, hit strike temps, and sparge. If youve mastered those things and feel pretty confident in your skills, then moving to all-grain should be an easy transition. Always remember that brewing all-grain is just making really fresh diluted wort extract, but you have much more control over the final product.

BREW ON!

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